Antoine Veil

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Antoine Veil (April 2013)

Antoine Veil (born August 28, 1926 in Blâmont , Département Meurthe-et-Moselle , † April 11, 2013 in Paris ) was a French manager , high civil servant and author. He was the husband of the politician Simone Veil .

Live and act

Birth and youth

Antoine Veil was born in Blâmont in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in 1926 , where his family owned a textile factory. Simone Veil later described in her autobiography Une vie (2007) the parents of her husband as "ascetic but of great human quality", who, like their own parents, were "non-religious, very cultivated Jews", "in love with France and him because of them Integration obliges ”. During the German occupation of France in World War II the rest fled to the same source initially Antoine Veil, then his family over Grenoble in Switzerland .

Antoine Veil joined the military during the liberation of France . After his release, he began studying at the renowned Sciences Po University in Paris in autumn 1945 .

family

During a winter holiday in the Alps in early 1946, 19-year-old Antoine Veil got to know his fellow student Simone Jacob, who was one year younger than him. The couple married in the fall of the same year. At the end of 1947 their son Jean was born, 13 months later a second child, Claude-Nicolas (died 2002), and finally a third son, Pierre-François, in 1954. Jean and Pierre-François Veil later took up the profession of lawyer.

Entry into politics and career as a skin fonctionnaire

In 1947 Antoine Veil accepted a position as an attaché on the staff of Minister Pierre-Henri Teitgen , and in 1948 a position with the then Finance State Secretary Alain Poher . When Poher became Commissioner for German and Austrian Affairs a year later, Antoine and Simone Veil followed him to Germany, where Antoine Veil held several consular posts in succession until he passed the entrance examination for the École nationale d'administration (ENA) in 1953 .

After studying at ENA (until 1955), he became Inspecteur des finances and worked in several ministries, including Joseph Fontanet , State Secretary for Industry and Trade and later Minister of Health.

Activities in commercial enterprises

With the beginning of the 1960s, Veil turned essentially to the economy, particularly the transport sector, although he continued to work in politics. Since 1963 he worked for the French Shipowners Association. In 1971 he became General Manager of Union de Transports Aériens (UTA). He left this post in 1980. He then became President of the Société pour le développement du transport aérien en Afrique (Sodetra). In 1982 he became President-directeur général (PDG) of the Manurhin company belonging to the Matra Group . He also worked as PDG for Matra Transport (now Siemens Mobility ) and President of the Société pour le financement de la production cinématographique et audiovisuelle (Sofica-Valor).

In 1985, as administrateur délégué , he took over the management of the travel company Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et du Tourisme , in which he initiated extensive restructuring and mutual equity investments with other companies and investment firms. After the failure of a project he had developed in 1989 to merge with the travel division of Havas (later taken over by the Thomas Cook Group ) due to the disagreement of the shareholders, he gave up the activity for Wagons-Lits in the same year.

From 2008 until his death, Antoine Veil was a member of the board of directors of Havas and chaired the strategy committee of its parent company Bolloré .

Political office since the 1960s; political positions

In 1966 he became a member of the steering committee (Comité directeur) of the political movement Center démocrate . In 1971 he was elected to the city council of Paris for its branch party Center démocratie et progrès (CDP) and was confirmed in office in the 1983 elections. In 1976 he moved into the regional council of the Île-de-France , a year later again as Conseiller municipal in the Paris city council.

As an opponent of the polarization of politics in two camps, Antoine Veil founded Club Vauban in the early 1980s , a group that included members of the political left and right. Veil was a staunch supporter of European integration and already regretted in the early 1990s that it had not been pursued more consistently:

«Les gens de ma génération porteront devant l'histoire le regret et la responsabilité d'avoir manqué cette integration à un moment où the temperature de fusion des composants permettait sans doute de la réaliser. »

"The people of my generation will bear the regret and responsibility, before history, for having missed this integration at a moment when the melting temperature of the components would most likely have allowed it to happen."

- Antoine Veil: La Mémoire longue (Plon, Paris, 1991)

In the presidential election in France in 1981 he was a member of the support committee for the incumbent Valéry Giscard d'Estaing . In the last years of his life he supported Nicolas Sarkozy , as did his wife Simone Veil . In January 2013 he took part in a demonstration in Paris against the introduction of marriage for all by the government of President François Hollande .

Antoine Veil died late in the evening on April 11, 2013 at the age of 86 in Paris.

honors and awards

Antoine Veil was Grand Officier of the Legion of Honor and holder of the Federal Cross of Merit .

On July 1, 2018, his remains, along with those of his wife, were transferred to the Panthéon, the national hall of fame, in Paris.

Works

  • Antoine Pinay, Antoine Veil: Un Français comme les autres . Belfond, Paris 1984, ISBN 2-7144-1677-2 (French, 184 pages).
  • La mémoire longue . Plon, Paris 1991, ISBN 2-259-02372-X (French).
  • Les années de sable . Flammarion, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-08-066754-8 (French, 169 pages).
  • Comédie française . Plon, Paris 1997, ISBN 2-259-18746-3 (French, 162 pages).
  • Antoine Veil, Emmanuel Galiero: Salut . Alphée, Monaco 2010, ISBN 978-2-7538-0638-2 (French, 139 pages).

literature

Web links

Commons : Antoine Veil  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Luc Cédelle: Antoine Veil, haut fonctionnaire, homme politique, chef d'entreprise et mari de ... In: lemonde.fr . April 13, 2013, accessed July 1, 2018 (French).
  2. ↑ a b c d Antoine Veil est décédé cette nuit. In: lefigaro.fr . April 12, 2013, accessed July 1, 2018 (French).
  3. ↑ a b Mort d'Antoine Veil, mari de Simone Veil. In: lemonde.fr . April 12, 2013, accessed July 1, 2018 (French).
  4. ↑ Entry on Antoine Victor Veil in Fichier des personnes décédées , accessed on May 16, 2020.
  5. ↑ Simone Veil is buried in the Panthéon. In: zeit.de . July 1, 2018, accessed July 1, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Veil, Antoine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French manager, senior civil servant and author
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Blâmont , Meurthe-et-Moselle department
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 2013
Place of death Paris