The Paris court decided on Thursday to suspend the sale of more than 400 objects that belonged to Georges Brassens, according to an order known to AFP, in the context of a battle between heirs and a descendant of a relative.
Postcards, personal letters, songbooks, love correspondence and reflections, these assets had been kept until now by Françoise Onténiente, daughter of the secretary and friend of Georges Brassens, Pierre Onténiente.
The latter, who died in 2013, had inherited a house from the poet as well as the usufruct of a second house in Paris. Since then, the legacy of the French singer, particularly generous with his family and friends during his lifetime, has tormented the Cazzani family, direct heir to Brassens, and Françoise Onténiente.
An estimated sale of one million euros
The suspension of the sale, ordered until the dispute over the fund is resolved, “is a reasonable decision because it protects the Brassens treasure as a whole,” Maïa Kantor, a lawyer for Serge Cazzani, nephew of Georges Brassens, told AFP.
The Gros et Delettrez company, which was to take charge of the Saturday auction at the Drouot hotel in Paris, was ordered to pay Serge Cazzani the amount of 5,000 euros, for legal costs incurred by the other party.
Among the 400 lots, whose value was estimated at one million euros, one hundred are “very valuable from an artistic and historical point of view”, according to the lawyer Maïa Kantor. “The idea is to archive these documents and share them with public and national institutions like the BNF (National Library of France, editor’s note) or the city of Sète,” her hometown, she suggests.
Source: BFM TV
