This “Survey” is divided chronologically.
The titles given are used to indicate changes in career and direction.


1945
Childhood and Adolescence
Born July 13, 1945 at 7:15 p.m. in Paris, my zodiac sign is Cancer, my rising sign is Sagittarius, and my moon sign is Virgo. My Chinese horoscope sign is the Rooster.
My first book, given to me by an old lady who taught me to read and write at the age of four, was about the Bible, the Flood and the animals on Noah’s Ark.
I studied in Paris at the very fashionable lycée Molière, where my (women) teachers were the “muses” of Existentialism’s leaders—from Camus to Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. In 1963, I published my first (and last) book of poems, Les Barreaux Surannés, ("Outdated Bars"). In 1964, in order to learn Spanish, I lived for several months at the Sagrada Familia Convent in Barrio San Augustin, Palma de Mallorca.



1964
First Diplomas
In 1964, I received a Bachelor’s Degree in both French Literature and Classics, and, in 1965, Bachelor’s Degrees in Art History and the History of Theater. Having studied at the Charles Dullin School of Theater, I was chosen to play the role of Angelique in Moliere’s Georges Dandin at the TPB, Théâtre Populaire de Bretagne, in a strange, pre-‘68 ambiance.
In the summer of 1965, I traveled to Israel, and worked in a kibbutz to pay for the trip throughout the country. Remembering the discoveries of that journey, just two years before the Six-Day War, I have very mixed feelings.
In 1967, after having worked in Grafrath, near Munich, to obtain my Diploma of German from the Goethe Institut, I sent the manuscript of a thriller I wrote to the author of The Diabolics, Boileau-Narcejac (in fact, there were two authors). One of them, Pierre Boileau, invited me to his apartment in Pigalle.

1967
Journalist

As I wanted to become a journalist, P.Boileau sent me to the Book Editor of Express, magazine. He accepted me as a secretary—putting me on the sidelines, considering the magazine’s rules of etiquette at the time of its founder, Françoise Giroud. Giroud was, in fact, the daughter of a famous journalist from Constantinople, who had been a former pupil at the Alliance israelite universelle: she was always pretending to be more Parisian than everyone else in Paris. In her eyes, someone who had been a secretary would eternally have the soul and destiny of a secretary.
The director of the mythical newspaper France-Soir, Pierre Lazareff, accepted my suggestion to assign me to a serial covering the most brilliant writers of thriller novels. I met James Hadley Chase (my neighbor in Paris), Patricia Highsmith, who lived in the country and talked only about snails, Frederic Dard, the father of San Antonio, and Georges Simenon, among others.
At the same time, I provided the Magazine Littéraire (the Literary Review), Lui with articles on and Playboy with articles on Lucifer and Satan, Old and New Psychiatry and the Last Noble Families in Europe. What was wonderful in the two latter magazines was that, with everyone looking at the photos of women, no one bothered with censorship, and you could write what ever you wanted.
Once, while standing in front of Lui’s offices on the Champs Elysées, I met one of the international reporters from Express, Georges Chaffard. I showed him the first article I published in Lui about Lucifer’s rising star in the Occident. He then proposed that I write a book on the subject, for the collection that the French publisher Calmann-Lévy (with whom he had just published his Secret Notebooks on Colonization) had asked him to direct and edit.
Unfortunately, he was not there to see the book published. Early one morning, on the road between France and Portugal, his car collided head on with another car, whose driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. Later, I would learn that the other driver was an old friend of my father’s who had fainted.

1970
Books and Broadcasting

My first book, Ave Lucifer, was, of course, dedicated to Georges Chaffard and was published in the fall of 1970. At my publisher’s charming Parisian townhouse, near the Opéra Garnier, I often had the chance to speak with the last of a long line of publishers, the courteous Robert Calmann-Lévy. He helped me to discipline my (then) foolish nature. I felt less at ease with his nephew and brief successor, Alan Ulmann (1929-1990), who also composed fados for the Portuguese singer Amalia Rodrigues. He was expelled by the Salazar police because of his leftist political leanings. The great artist Roland Topor accepted to do the artwork for the dust jacket of my book, then published in Spain, and also in France in the Pocket collection J’Ai Lu, (more than 100 000 copies) by Jacques Sadoul—himself a science-fiction writer.

After being interviewed on the TV show Post-Scriptum, by Michel Polac, one of Polac’s assistants, Gitta Pessis, insisted on hiring me to present the show. A victim of heart disease, Polac had no choice but to leave me alone each week with the help of big TV names like Lalou, Bory and Treguer. The press was full of praise, and I benefited from the “one-day” celebrity of television. Polac, however, didn’t like that; and at his return, I was fired.

The difference was now I was quite well known. I was still writing for the Magazine Littéraire, Lui and even—since I was no longer officially working as a secretary—for Express covering topics such as Buckminster Fuller, Ronald Laing, Fernando Arrabal, Roland Topor, Pierre Schaeffer, Stéphane Lupasco, the East-West Group of the Pugwash Conferences on Science, the devil in the Occident, artificial intelligence, and Science-Fiction…

In 1971, the radio station France-Culture sent me to Persepolis, for the 2,500th Anniversary of the Persian Empire and the celebrations organized by the Shah of Iran. While there I met a plethora of famous journalists, including Léon Zitrone, from French TV Toni Savignano (Giornale d’Italia), Clara Falcone (Il Tempo), Djavad Alamir Prince Dawallou (Khadjar) and correspondent for Le Monde, and First Minister Hoveyda.

The Founder and Director of the French Broadcasting Corporation’s Research Division, Pierre Schaeffer, then asked me to work there as a producer and journalist. At the time, it was an enclave of freedom, creativity and exchange, a breeding ground for artists. In 1972, I directed a movie on science fiction, Les Evadés du Futur, (Escapees from the Future”) (, featuring Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, John Brunner and Norman Spinrad). I also conducted one of the rare interviews with Philip Dick, , in the mythological universe of Twenty Century Fox and Disneyland. Dick wrote a wonderful text about it.

The first international conference on pollution took place in Stockholm later that year. For the first time the voices of the mercury-poisoned fishermen from Minamata, Japan were heard: I did the film for the Banques Populaires and the advertising agency Publicis.

In 1973, I published under the pen name Eric Aggur, twelve books on the Zodiac with Bordas. I also directed the documentary Alan Watts, un philosophe boudhiste for the TV show “Un certain regard,” produced by Mrs. Adler. I began to work more and more with one of my future guardian angels, the computer scientist-guitarist-programmer, William Skyvington, at the Research Division.

At the same time, I started to write a satire on the final years of President Giscard d’Estaing’s Republic, Les Filles de Madame Claude(“The Pink Squad of Madame Claude”) , published in 1974 by Stock-Julliard, and then as a pocket book for the book club France-Loisir, as well as in Italy (more than 120 000 copies).

My co-author, Anne de Boismilon, was a serious woman and a professor at the elegant religious institution, Sainte-Croix de Neuilly. She was careful enough to adopt a pen name but…both of our photos were on the back cover of the book! I knew Anne through the wonderful journalist—and expert on Heidegger— Frédéric de Towarnicki, who wrote for the Express. Anne and I became like sisters.
The same year, I directed a TV movie on La mort d’un journal “The death of Life and the mythical international (reports”) for 52’—a show directed by the famous war journalist, Jean-François Chauvel. In Washington, I met another of my guardian angels, Gilberte Furstenberg. she was at the time a correspondent with Express, and later became a French teacher at MIT and a pioneer in the multimedia/hypermedia field.

In 1975, I did my first report on the Jesuits, Le Concile noir (“The Black Council”) for French TV. I also published the Pink Squad of Madame Claude, (Les Filles de Madame Claude ) with Anne de Boismilon.

In Krakow, in 1976, I represented Pierre Schaeffer at the Ford Foundation’s East-West meeting on the “circulation of information,” in order to prepare the next official conference in Belgrade. There, I met Klaus von Bismarck and Ivo Lederer from the Ford Foundation, and obtained from Uglov (Novosty News Agency) official permission to go to the Soviet Union for an inquiry on Psychiatric Hospitals.

In 1977, I published the book Droit d'asiles en Union Soviétique (“The Right to Asylum(s) in the Soviet Union”) with Julliard (translated in Italian). The preface was written by the playwright Ionesco, and the dust jacket was designed by
Tim.

From July 1, 1977 to January 31, 1978 I was a journalist at VSD and worked with Jean Gorini. I also became friends with Elisabeth Fechner, a specialist on movie stars. Through Michel Clerc (editor-in-chief for Paris-Match and a show on RTL) I met Henri Abdel Jalil, a go-between for the United Arab Emirates, notably Qatar.

In 1978, I lived partly in the West Indies, where I worked as director and editor-in chief of the seven-volume Encyclopedia on the West Indies and Guyana, “Arawak” (Tchou, 1978). There, I first became acquainted with several actors from my “inner theater,” the beautiful Katleen Wallerand, Aubelin Jolicoeur, Princess Beauharnais-Romanovski, and the excellent photographer, Chantoutou (Chantal Regnault), who specialized in voodoo. In July, after returning to France, I began to work for the Communications Consulting Agency of Copexen, where I created a magazine for Siemens, Siemenscope, and wrote papers for firms like Schlumberger and Thomson.


1981
Publisher of Coffee Table Books, Popularization of Science, Techniques and Industry.
In 1981 , together with the Director of Copexen, I founded Hologramme Publishing specializing in illustrated books. My favorite collection was Chemins (“Paths”), which was about the popularization of science and techniques. For Chemins I did practically everything, including collecting documents and photos, writing the main text, contacting Nobel Prize winners and company executives to ask them to write “inserts,” in addition to taking care of advertising and sales. It was in this collection that I wrote my first book about popularization at the international level, The Electronic Epoch, (la Grande Epopée de l'Electronique (translations were published at the same time in the US and Great Britain, and the following year in Germany).

In 1983, I wrote, edited and directed Biotechnology, Strategies for Life (with English, Dutch and Japanese versions) and wrote articles for the engineering magazine, Usine nouvelle.

In 1985, I directed and edited The Science of Mind which was published in English by MIT; and worked with historian Jacques Le Goff on an ten-volume collection of books The Epic of Western Culture, concerning the main values of European identity. Some of the collaborators included Umberto Eco (Bologne), Hélène Ahrweiler (Paris), Lescek Kolakowski (Oxford) and David Landes (Harvard). Because the two founders of Hologramme had, by that point, ended their partnership, the collection has yet to be finished.

In 1988, at Maastricht, invited by Theo Martens, head of Natuur und Techniek, I met the science editors Bernard Dixon and Nigel Calder, editor-in-chief of the New Scientist, as well as Prince Klaus, the Queen of the Netherlands’ husband, who wrote the preface for my biotechnology book.
My daughter Charlotte was born on the 6th of July.

In 1989, I founded Antébi Publishing and published Le Bébé avant sa naissance (“The Baby Before Birth”) written by Dr Kutner and illustrated with color echograms; and Les Habits du Pouvoir : la Justice (“Power Dress: Justice”), written by Jacques Boedels. The preface for the latter was written by the lawyer, Jean-Denis Bredin, who was well known because of his book on the Dreyfus Case. This title went on to win the Judicial Prize, Prix du Palais Littéraire et Musical. The book’s designer (who previously worked for Hologramme) was the great Tillmann Eichhorn.

In 1990 : together with historian François Lebrun, I co-authored the superb book about Jesuits, Les Jésuites ou la Gloire de Dieu (co-published with Stock). I also contributed articles to the magazine Notre Histoire.


1996
Doctorate in the History of Ottoman Palestine and Multimedia Experience

In 1996, after four years of researching French and foreign archives, I published L'Homme du Sérail(“Jewish Pasha”) with NiL, founded by Nicole Lattès. At the same time, I obtained a Diploma from the “School of Advanced Studies” (EPHE) on Ottoman Palestine, Albert Antébi (1873-1919) ou la Religion de la France, under the direction of Professor Gérard Nahon, with a jury composed of Henry Laurens (“School for Oriental Studies” Inalco), Jacques Le Goff and Jean Baubérot (President of EPHE and specialist on Protestantism and Secularization). During my research I met my cousin, Lisa Antéby, a very bright CNRS member and specialist on Ethiopia, who went on to become one of my great friends.

At the same time, I took training courses with a great teacher, Jérôme Caillot, and learned how to use different programs, such as: Photoshop, Première, Director, Flash, SoundEdit, GoLive, FrontPage, DreamWeaver, Word, basics of Flash and Lingo, HTML and XML. My objective was to learn how to apply my expertise with illustrated books in the multimedia/hypermedia field.
Conception and creation of a Web site on Pierre Schaeffer

1998-1999 :

In 1998-1999, I worked with Claude Lepage, the founder of the Laboratory of New Technologies at EPHE-Sorbonne, on the graphic design of EPHE’s Web site. It was there that I began the dummy for my CD-ROM on Jesuits.

In OCTOBER 1999, at Rocca di Pappa, near Rome, I presented the CD-ROM, “Jesuit Pedagogy in Europe” to the principals of 300 European Jesuit high schools, as well as to the directors of the Educational Department of the Company of Jesus. The CD-ROM is available in three languages: English, French and Spanish.
"A fascinating version. I congratulate you on such a successful production", wrote the General Secretary of Jesuit Education in Rome, Father Gabriel Codina, s.j. "I must congratulate you on a very fine and imaginative piece of work with tremendous possibility for the future", wrote Rev. Alan Harrison, s.j., delegate for the Jesuit Education Office in London.

The same month, Calmann-Lévy published my book on Les Missionnaires Juifs de la France, (“The Jewish Missionaries of France”), the first history of the Alliance israélite universelle’s main directors, covering all the main Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cities, and including all the important political changes in the Balkans, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere at the beginning of the twentieth century). One of the chapters is dedicated to my grandmother, Henriette, who ran the school for young Middle Eastern girls wanting to become teachers. She saved several of them during World War II.

In July, I obtained PhD in History of Religious Sciences, Ideologies and Systems from the Sorbonne (EPHE, salle Marcel Mauss). I wrote my doctorate on Edmond de Rothschild (1845-1934), ), under the direction of Gérard Nahon. The jury (Henry Laurens of the Paris Oriental Institute “Inalco,” David Landes of Harvard University, François Georgeon of the School of Historical and Social Sciences “EHESS,” and the President of EPHE, Jean Baubérot) awarded me highest honors. On that occasion I met Baron Edmond Rothschild’s great-grandson, Benjamin, and his mother, the Baroness Nadine.

In NOVEMBER 2001, I created and developed the Web site, Le Séminaire ininterrompu (“The Uninterrupted Seminar”) for Professor Gérard Nahon: www.antebiel.com/nahon

In 2001, I took part in a research group studying “how the past is used (and/or abused),” Usages du passé, The group was brought together approximately every six months by Jean-Marc Chouraqui, director of the Inter-universitary Institute for Jewish Study and Culture, which he founded under the name I.E.C.J. at the University of Aix-Marseille.

For the series on first names published by Zulma, I wrote a book on Salomé.

At the end of 2002, I worked several months for an online Press Review for Keypress, and wrote inserts for Robert’s Dictionnaire Historique de la Langue Française (“The Historical Dictionary of the French Language”).

2003 - 2004
and Projects

I worked as the project manager, artistic director and co-author of the CD-ROM, Jewish Journeys in France. The finished CD is not yet available, due to a conflict with the producer.

Edmond de Rothschild. L'Homme qui racheta la Terre Sainte (“The Man who Redeemed the Holy Land”, my thesis rewritten for a wider audience) was published with Rocher Publishing, run by one of the rare “free” publishers left in Paris, Jean-Paul Bertrand.

August 2003 : Conception and creation of my own Web site "My Life is a Novel". With an on-line journal

2004 : Preparing a lecture, and a contribution to an exhibition.

Future publications: A French Mad Hatter/ Eine Nuancierte Spiel Über Meine Jugend/Camaïeu de ma Jeunesse.
DVD-ROM: Invisible Heritage, Mediterranean Myth or Memory? and The Ghost Settlements of the Baron