Edouard Herriot

Édouard Herriot (1924)

Édouard Herriot (born July 5, 1872 in Troyes , † March 26, 1957 in Saint-Genis-Laval , Département Rhône ) was a French politician of the Radical Party .

Life

After studying at the École normal supérieure in Paris, from which he graduated in 1893 with the Agrégation in literature, Herriot worked as a high school professor and university teacher in Lyon . He was awarded an honoris causa doctorate from the University of Glasgow . On October 30, 1899, he married Blanche Rebatel (1877–1962) in Lyon.

Herriot was in the Senate from 1912 to 1919 . From 1905 to 1957 he was mayor of Lyon with a break during the German occupation during the Second World War . In 1926 he became a minister and in 1932 President of the Council (head of government) and in 1947 President of the National Assembly .

Herriot was politicized by the Dreyfus affair at the end of the 19th century, which prompted him to join the anti-clerical Radical Party ( Parti radical ) and the Lyon section of the French League for Human Rights (Ligue française pour la défense des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen) .

After the victory of the left in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 1924, Herriot became head of government and foreign minister for the first time. He campaigned for international disarmament. During his reign, the French troops were withdrawn from the Rhineland and the Ruhr area and the Soviet Union was diplomatically recognized. Herriot supported the goals of the Paneuropean Union founded by Coudenhove-Kalergi . On the other hand, his efforts to suppress the influence of the Church in Alsace and Lorraine and to break off diplomatic relations with the Vatican failed because of domestic political resistance. Due to the economic and financial crisis, which Herriot could not get under control, he had to resign in April 1925 after only ten months in office.

He was now chairman of the Chamber of Deputies . He resigned from this office in 1926 in protest when the government demanded special powers from the Chamber of Deputies to resolve the financial crisis. After the fall of the Briand government , he became head of government again, but stayed only two days before becoming minister of culture in the conservative Poincaré government , which belonged to the right-of-center Alliance démocratique .

After the 1932 elections, Herriot became head of government for the third time. He represented France at the Lausanne Conference , at which Germany's reparation obligations were canceled in return for a small final payment that was never made. When Herriot subsequently advocated the payment of another installment to the United States to settle the French war debts , which had previously always been paid with the German reparations, his government failed in the Chamber of Deputies in December 1932. A little later he accepted an invitation from Stalin to the Ukraine . Herriot allowed himself to be abused by Soviet propaganda when he praised the economic progress in the Soviet Union despite the rampant famine there . Impressed by the unrest in France on February 6, 1934 , despite some skepticism, he supported the merger of the left parties to form the Popular Front and joined the Doumergue cabinet as minister of state . He remained Minister of State in the subsequent Flandin and Laval cabinets and tried to mediate there. In 1935 he again took over the chairmanship of the Chamber of Deputies.

After the defeat in June 1940 , Herriot abstained when, on July 10, 1940, a constitutional amendment and the extensive authorization of Marshal Pétain were up for a decision in the Chamber of Deputies . Herriot was an opponent of the general who sympathized with Nazi Germany .

In protest against the awarding of medals of honor to members of the French Volunteer Legion ( Légion des volontaires français ) collaborating with the Germans , he returned his own medal in 1942. The Vichy regime placed him under house arrest. After the Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944, Herriot was interned by the Germans in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in Maréville until the end of the war . In August 1944 he refused to work on the plans of Pierre Laval and the German Ambassador Otto Abetz for a restoration of the Third Republic , which was intended as a counterbalance to the provisional government of General de Gaulle .

After the war, Herriot returned to the mayor's office of Lyon and in 1947 was again President of the Chamber of Deputies. There he was an opponent of de Gaulle and his plans to give the president more power. When he was elected president in 1953, he could no longer be elected for health reasons.

When the Monument of Gratitude was inaugurated in Basel on June 27, 1948 , Herriot ended his speech with the words: Vive la Suisse, terre de travail, de liberté et de bonté. ("Long live Switzerland, a country of work, freedom and friendliness.").

In Lyon there is the Lycée Edouard Herriot high school named after him and the Hôpital Edouard Herriot hospital . In Frankfurt am Main , Herriotstrasse in the Niederrad office district in the Schwanheim district is named after him.

Awards

Édouard Herriot was elected to the Académie française on December 5, 1946 . He was an officer in the Legion of Honor . In 1954 the World Peace Council honored him with the International Peace Prize .

literature

• Jasper Wieck: The way to “Décadence”. France and the Manchurian Crisis 1931–1933 . ( Paris Historical Studies; 40). Bouvier, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-416-02554-7 . ( Digitized version )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ altbasel.ch: Monument of gratitude. Retrieved September 22, 2019 . 

Web links

Commons : Édouard Herriot  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Édouard Herriot in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Édouard Herriot in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
• Herriot Biography at The World at War (English)
• Herriot biography 1933 at PM Żukowski from 2007 (Polish)

predecessor	Office	successor
Jean-Victor Augagneur	Maire de Lyon 1905–1942 / 1945–1957	Louis Pradel
Frédéric François-Marsal Aristide Briand André Tardieu	Prime Minister of France June 14, 1924-10. April 1925 July 19, 1926–21. July 1926 June 3, 1932-14. December 1932	Paul Painlevé Raymond Poincaré Joseph Paul-Boncour
Edmond Lefebvre du Prey Aristide Briand André Tardieu	Foreign Minister of France June 14, 1924-17. April 1925 July 19, 1926-23. July 1926 June 3, 1932-18. December 1932	Aristide Briand Aristide Briand Joseph Paul-Boncour
Edouard Daladier	Minister of Education of France July 23, 1926–11. November 1928	Pierre Marraud
Paul Painlevé Fernand Bouisson Vincent Auriol	President of the French National Assembly April 22, 1925–22. July 1926 June 4, 1936–9. July 1940 January 21, 1947–12. January 1954	Raoul Péret - André Le Troquer