Augustinus als Symbolfigur der Afrique latine bei Louis Bertrand

“St. Augustine as a symbolic figure of Louis Bertrand’s Afrique latine” – This article focuses on the important role of Augustine within the theories of colonial novelist Louis Bertrand. His concept of a Afrique Latine underlines that North African territory – having been Roman since Antiquity – was just ‘restored’ by the French occupation in 19th and 20th centuries. In this ideological context, the Church Father plays a major symbolic role as Latin ancestor of the French settlers. The text presents Bertrand’s ideas on Augustine and analyses emblematic passages of his biography (Saint Augustin, 1913) emphasizing the function of the African Saint as heroic model within the French colonial discourse.