Aristide Briand
Aristide Briand (born March 28, 1862 in Nantes , † March 7, 1932 in Paris ) was a French politician. Between 1909 and 1932, Briand alternated between the offices of French Prime Minister , Education, Justice and Foreign Minister . He was eleven times head of government and twenty-three times minister in the rapidly changing cabinets of the Third Republic . In 1926 he and Gustav Stresemann received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Locarno treaties .
Life
Childhood and youth
Briand was born on March 28, 1862 in the port city of Nantes in western France . His parents owned a modest little café called "Croix Verte" on Rue du Marchix in the waterfront. The guests were mostly sailors and dock workers.
When Briand was two years old, his family moved to Saint-Nazaire , a port city on the Loire estuary . Here his father opened a wine and liquor store, which he soon sold to open a "Café chantant", a small music café. The guests of this café were also seafarers who came here to meet girls from the city.
Briand attended the Saint-Nazaire high school. He was not a hardworking student and occasionally disturbed the lessons with little jokes, but his teachers noticed his extraordinary intelligence , sharpness of mind and comprehension very early on. He has received several awards for reciting long texts by heart, which thanks to his excellent memory was not difficult. He became the protégé of the headmaster Genty, whom he called "papa". He took long walks with Briand, during which he talked a lot with the boy about philosophy and literature and thus had a great influence on his thinking and rhetoric . Briand always fondly remembered his mentor and later awarded him the Legion of Honor as Minister of Education .
At the age of 16, Briand received a scholarship for the Lycée in Nantes because of his talent and moved there to do the Baccalauréat , the French Abitur , as a boarding school student . Pictures from this time show Briand as a slim, well-groomed young man who looks slightly sickly. His friends jokingly called him “Trompe la mort” (the one who cheats on death), as there was a short period of suspicion of tuberculosis . In Nantes he met Jules Verne , who was the patron of one of Briand's classmates. The writer took great pleasure in talking to the intelligent young man and repeatedly invited him on weekends for walks through Nantes and the surrounding area. Verne took the character of the 16-year-old Briand in his novel Deux ans de vacances (German title: Zwei Jahre Ferien ) published in 1888 as a model for the character of Briant . He is the intelligent and daring leader of some children who are stranded alone on a desert island due to an accident.
The boarding school student Briand valued French literature , especially the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Denis Diderot and Jean Racine . However, due to his simple origins, Briand was never among those typical intellectuals of the French bourgeoisie , whose ideals were heavily influenced by the Enlightenment of the 18th century and the writings of Voltaire .
Regional politician and socialist
After graduation, Briand returned to Saint-Nazaire in 1881 and took a job as a typist in a small law firm. The dry filing work quickly became disgusting and bored him. In 1883 he therefore announced the place and went to Paris to attend the Sorbonne to study law take. At the age of 22 he began his journalistic work for the left-wing weekly La Démocratie de l'Ouest in Saint-Nazaire . In his contributions, mostly signed with Nihil , he severely criticized the existing parliamentary system and the social inequality accepted by the conservative bourgeoisie. In 1886 Briand left Paris as a licencié en droit after passing the state examination to work as a lawyer in his hometown. Thanks to his brilliant rhetoric and great powers of persuasion, he soon had his first successes as a criminal defense lawyer in court. In particular, he represented many of his clients in political litigation without a fee.
In 1888 Briand was elected to the city parliament of Saint-Nazaire. When he ran as candidat républicain radical révisioniste for the parliamentary elections on September 22nd and October 6th in 1889 at the age of only 27 , he lost significantly to the conservative candidate despite his support in the workers of Saint-Nazaire. After this disappointment, he broke with bourgeois left-wing radicalism and turned to the socialist camp. This move was later often cited by political opponents as evidence of Briand's alleged lack of thought.
In 1891 Briand was allegedly picked up by the police at a shepherd's hour . Briand and Jeanne Giraudeau, the wife of a well-known banker, were sentenced by the court to a month's imprisonment and a fine of 200 francs for violating public morals. The alleged scandal, which was accompanied by a smear campaign against him by the bourgeois camp, became known far beyond Saint-Nazaire and Nantes. After the court of appeal in Rennes also confirmed the verdict, Briand seemed politically and socially at an end. The court of cassation in Poitiers finally overturned the judgment in 1892 and acquitted Briand and Jeanne Giraudeau, since the only eyewitness among the 170 witnesses summoned in the three trials retracted his testimony under the pressure of interrogation. Briand was re-admitted to the bar after the acquittal.
Since January 10, 1892 Briand was a member of a French socialist party. Disillusioned by the events, he turned away from regional politics. Briand turned his back on his homeland, as a speaker and agitator at socialist meetings, rallies by trade unions and labor exchanges to demand a general strike as a means of proletarian self-help against social injustice. It was not without pride that Briand claimed paternity for the idea of a general strike throughout his life.
The socialists were hopelessly at odds with one another. Briand tried to mediate, but turned the extreme left against him when he spoke out in favor of socialist cooperation with the government. Briand sided with the “parliamentary socialists” such as René Viviani , Alexandre Millerand and Jean Jaurès . In the parliamentary elections in 1893, Briand, as a revolutionary socialist, lost to the poet Clovis Hugues in La Villette . In the 1898 election he went to Paris (Clichy-Levallois) and lost again.
In 1901, Briand defended Gustave Hervé , the “standard-bearer of anti-patriotism”, in an explosive political trial with the provocative words: “Keep your fatherland to yourself, Mr. Public Prosecutor! It was precisely this fatherland that led us to Sedan , just as Napoleon's fatherland led us to Waterloo . "
From 1901 to 1905 Briand was general secretary of the Parti socialiste de France (PSDF). In April / May 1902, at the age of 40, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Saint-Étienne .
Way to the Ministry of Culture
At the beginning of the 20th century, maintaining the state church treaty in France became increasingly difficult. In 1904, the convinced anti-clerical Prime Minister Émile Combes took a breach of the Concordat provisions as an opportunity to recommend its termination to parliament. The Roman Inquisition, today's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , summoned two French bishops without notifying the French government. In February 1905, on Combes' initiative, Parliament commissioned a 33-member committee to develop and examine various drafts for the separation of church and state . Briand became the committee's spokesman and rapporteur. He was advised in this position by two high-ranking liberal church representatives, Bishop Lacroix of Tarentaise and Archbishop Fuzet of Rouen. Briand advocated a liberal separation in which the state's claim to power should stop before the church. “The secular state is not anti-religious, it is non-religious”. The strike leader Briand once again proved himself to be a mediator between hardened fronts: the separation law was intended to satisfy both the anti-clericals in parliament and the Catholics in rural France.
When Maurice Rouvier became Prime Minister in January 1905, he offered Briand the office of Minister of Education. However, after a consultation with Jaurès, who vehemently advised against participating in a bourgeois government, Briand turned down the offer.
The law promulgated in December 1905 provided for the church to retain its property and for so-called associations cultuelles to be set up to deal with its material interests . The French bishops voted in January 1906 by a large majority for the adoption of the law. Pope Pius X expressly rejected the separation in the encyclical Vehementer nos and accused the French government of robbing the Church. Through the establishment of cult associations, church affairs are indirectly entrusted to laypeople, thus circumventing the church hierarchy. After the encyclical was published on February 11, 1906, there were tumults over the implementation of the law. Under pressure from Catholics and the left in parliament, the Rouvier government dissolved.
The new government was formed in March 1906 by Ferdinand Sarrien . He was able to convince Briand, against Jaurès' resistance, to take over the Ministry of Culture and Education. With his entry into the bourgeois government of Sarria, Briand broke with both the socialist bloc, which had finally come to an agreement a year earlier, and with his long-time friend Jaurès. After his exclusion from the party, he founded the Parti républicain-socialiste with Alexandre Millerand and René Viviani .
Briand also retained the post when Georges Clemenceau , previously Minister of Justice, succeeded Sarrien as Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior . As minister of education , Briand dedicated himself to the implementation of the separation law and continued to strive to find a balance between the angry Catholics and the anti-clerical parliamentary majority. Through a mediating legislation, Briand created the possibility of tolerating violations of the separation law in order to avoid open struggle with the Catholic Church, which rejected the cult associations. Worship services were permitted even without the establishment of cult associations. The Encyclical Gravissimo responded with a formal ban on cult associations, which, in accordance with the Separation Act, was tantamount to surrendering the church's property. Briand's attempts to mediate failed because of the intransigence of the Catholic Church. In 1908, for example, 400 million francs from the liquidation of church assets were spent on hospitals and other welfare institutions. Only 16 years later under Benedict XV. the cult associations were set up as diocesan associations .
Prime Minister before the First World War
After he was appointed Minister of Justice in 1908, Briand took over from Clemenceau as Prime Minister at the end of July 1909 at the request of the bourgeois-liberal President Armand Fallières . In the autumn of the following year, there were violent labor disputes in France . The government declared the general strike of the railroad workers called on October 12, 1910, to be a military and economic danger for France. Briand had the strikers of military age called up and threatened the others with dismissal. Briand, the former advocate of the general strike, justified this before parliament, amid angry protests from MPs, by saying that the strike threatened “the right to life of society” and had exposed the nation to an unbearably humiliating situation. Because of the commotion, he had to dictate the end of his speech from the lectern to the stenographer alone. Although the chamber voted in favor of him by a large majority on the following day, Briand resigned and, after the new election on November 2, formed a new cabinet from the supporters of his decision.
On January 17, 1911, a mentally deranged man entered Parliament and shot Briand, who was not injured.
Briand resigned again on February 24, 1911, and Joseph Caillaux became the new Prime Minister. The reason this time was resistance from some members of parliament against his mediating policy towards the Catholic Church. After the Second Morocco Crisis was ended by the Morocco-Congo Treaty , Briand returned in January 1912 as Minister of Justice in the cabinet newly formed by Poincaré and was again head of government for two months in early 1913. Until the beginning of the first Balkan War in 1912, Briand was hardly involved in foreign policy issues. After foreign policy suddenly came to the fore on the veillée des armes , the “eve of war”, Briand often stayed at the Quai d'Orsay to confer with Poincaré.
Prime and Foreign Ministers in the First World War
As Minister of Justice in the Viviani cabinet from August 26, 1914 to October 29, 1915, Briand took on a large part of foreign affairs. He appointed several envoys and corresponded with numerous ambassadors. Briand was Prime Minister and Foreign Minister from October 1915 to March 1917. Briand was instrumental in creating the allied front in south-eastern Europe. His aim was to freeze the front line in France and to give the troops freed in this way more freedom of movement in the southeast. Clemenceau considered this tactic "a case for the state court", but the military success of the Allies in September 1918 should prove Briand right: north of Saloniki , the first break occurred in the front of the Central Powers . After a conflict between the Chamber of Deputies and War Minister Hubert Lyautey , in which the latter had refused to divulge certain military details, Briand and his cabinet resigned on March 17, 1917.
Political activity after the First World War
After the First World War , Briand was one of the supporters of international peace efforts and the League of Nations . After he took over the business of government again in 1921, he resigned on January 22, 1922, because the security pact between France and Great Britain was not ratified at the Cannes conference and Briand's criticism of the harsh conditions of the Versailles peace treaty against the German Reich at the Population met resistance.
From 1925 to 1929 Briand remained foreign minister in 14 successive governments and campaigned for disarmament, rapprochement with Germany and international cooperation. In 1925 he was the chief architect of the Locarno Treaties . In 1926 he received the Nobel Peace Prize for this together with the German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann , with whom he was a member of the Freemasons .
In 1928 he was also the initiator of the Briand-Kellogg Pact , a treaty for the mutual renunciation of war between states. Together with the German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann , Briand supported the Paneuropean idea .
Memorandum on the establishment of a European Union
It was only after the Second World War that Aristide Briand's attempt at European unification had a lasting effect: in 1930, in his memorandum on the establishment of a European Union ( L'organization d'un régime d'union fédérale européenne ), he had “European cooperation in conjunction with the League of Nations “Suggested. This should take place on the basis of a mandate from the League of Nations and its (then) 27 European member states.
Briand's design was ahead of its time. The reasons for the failure of his efforts to achieve European unification included the resurgence of the nation states during the 1920s, the unbridled antagonism between the German Empire and France (→ German-French hereditary enmity ) and the global economic crisis . Also that of the Weimar Republic to be paid high reparations and the (vain) hope for revision of the Versailles peace treaty that of France and Britain zurückzubezahlenden war bonds to the United States , the plans of the German Reich for a central European economic alliance with Austria and the successor states of the Habsburg Monarchy , The US economic aid that favored the German Reich (→ Dawes Plan ) and Germany's orientation towards America opposed Briand's idea.
The demand of the Briand plan for a political union as the first prerequisite for further European integration aroused great opposition, in addition, the death of Gustav Stresemann on October 3, 1929 and the new French government (with Briand as foreign minister ) became the Franco-German government Communication interrupted. Great Britain's fundamentally negative attitude towards the idea of European unification and the rise of the NSDAP after the 1930 Reichstag election also had a dampening effect.
Briand's memorandum had a significant influence on the European unification process after the Second World War. The European Congress in The Hague in 1948 dealt centrally with Briand's ideas; he went beyond Briand's plans for a loose confederation . A European federal state or a European constitution was not yet up for discussion. The subsequent Council of Europe could not initiate the political unification of Western Europe . Some of his institutions were inspired by Briand's ideas:
- Briand called the Committee of Ministers the 'Standing Political Committee',
- the permanent representation of the member states at the Council of Europe at Briand was still part of the League of Nations,
- Briand had proposed conferences of the members of the government of the member states to discuss common questions as a 'European conference',
- Briand had designed a permanent secretariat, and
- Briand had already considered it necessary to promote cultural, economic and social similarities.
Briand's plan was meant to be a very loose union. The federal relationship between the governments should “under no circumstances and in no way compromise the sovereign rights of the member states of such a de facto association […]. Understanding between the nations of Europe must take place on the basis of unconditional sovereignty and complete political independence. ”Briand thought of“ subordinating the economic problem to the political ”.
Sickness and death
Towards the end of his life Briand suffered from chronic uremia , which also affected his central nervous system. The result was, among other things, a reversal of the day-night rhythm, which kept him sleepless at night, but kept nodding off during the day. One scene was particularly embarrassing when the Foreign Minister, who was famous for his brilliant rhetoric, was given the floor in the Chamber of Deputies in 1931 but could not say anything because he was soundly asleep. Because of these sleep disorders, the trip to Berlin that Briand and Prime Minister Pierre Laval had planned for the end of September 1931 had to be postponed. Arriving in the German capital, Briand made such a sick impression on his German hosts that the 83-year-old Reich President Hindenburg asked concerned whether “the old man” had survived the trip well.
Another consequence of Briand's uremic encephalopathy was a euphoric and often unrealistic over-optimism. When, in January 1932, the digitalism drugs with many side effects were discontinued, with which he had been treated until then, he believed himself completely cured. It took Laval some effort to persuade Briand, who was barely able to work and who was also leaning more and more politically to the left, to leave office. Briand now planned, even without office, to work for world peace only by means of his words. In March 1932 he expressed his confidence that in a few weeks he would be able to settle the conflict between Japan and China, which were on the verge of war after the Mukden incident ; it would take him less than a year to resolve all tensions in the League of Nations. It did not come to that: on March 7, 1932, he died of his illness in Paris.
Honors
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On March 30, 1932, the Chamber of Deputies passed a law that Briand “did a lot for the fatherland”. This sentence can also be found on the Monument à la Paix , dedicated to Paul Landowski's Briand , which was erected in 1937 in front of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs on the Quai d'Orsay in the 7th arrondissement of Paris.
The Briand Fjord in Antarctica and the Aristide Briand Bridge in Berlin-Tegel are named after Briand.
Works
- France and Germany. With an introduction by Gustav Stresemann , edited by Artur Rosenberg . Dresden 1928.
literature
- Gérard Unger: Aristide Briand, le ferme conciliateur . Editions Fayard, 2005.
- Achille Elisha: Aristide Briand, la paix mondiale et l'union européenne. Editions Ivoire-Clair, 2003.
- Edward D. Keeton: Briand's Locarno Diplomacy. French Economics, Politics, and Diplomacy 1925–1929 . 2nd Edition. New York 1987.
- Matthias Schulz: Aristide Briand (1862–1932) , in: European History Online , ed. from the Institute for European History (Mainz) , 2010 Accessed on: June 14, 2012.
- Ferdinand Siebert: Aristide Briand 1862–1932. A statesman between France and Europe . Rentsch, Erlenbach / Zurich 1973, ISBN 3-7249-0439-8 .
- Georges Suarez: Briand, sa vie, son œuvre . 6 volumes, Paris 1938–1952 (takes into account numerous personal papers of Briand).
Web links
- Literature by and about Aristide Briand in the catalog of the German National Library
- Newspaper article about Aristide Briand in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
- Anne-Cécile Renouard, Gabriel Eikenberg: Aristide Briand. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
- Information from the Nobel Foundation on the award ceremony for Aristide Briand in 1926
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bertrand Galimard Flavigny (2012): Ceux qui ont fait la France: 200 personnages clés de l'histoire de France , p. 309 ( online )
- ^ Maurice Baumont: Aristide Briand. Diplomat and idealist . Musterschmidt-Verlag, Göttingen 1966, p. 13.
- ^ Maurice Baumont: Aristide Briand. Diplomat and idealist . Musterschmidt-Verlag, Göttingen 1966, p. 15.
- ^ Maurice Baumont: Aristide Briand. Diplomat and idealist . Musterschmidt-Verlag, Göttingen 1966, p. 23.
- ↑ Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein: Victoires et frustrations 1914–1929 (= Nouvelle histoire de la France contemporaine , vol. 12), Editions du Seuil, Paris 1990, p. 60.
- ↑ Alexander Giese: The Freemasons: An Introduction. Böhlau, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-205-77353-5 , p. 9.
- ↑ Dietmut Majer, Wolfgang Höhne: European unification efforts from the Middle Ages to the founding of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957. Kit Scientific Publishing, Karlsruhe 2014, ISBN 978-3-7315-0286-9 , p. 144. doi : 10.5445 / KSP / 1000043641
- ↑ This section is based on Chapter II.2: Memorandum on the establishment of a European Union by Aristide Briand, 1930 . In: Anton Schäfer (Ed.): The draft constitution for the establishment of a European Union. Outstanding documents from 1930 to 2000 . BSA-Verlag, Dornbirn 2001, ISBN 3-9500616-7-3 (partially also: Diploma thesis, University of Innsbruck 2001), pp. 30–39, Verassungsvertrag.eu (PDF; 420 kB) as of 2008.
- ↑ Ferdinand Siebert: Aristide Briand 1862-1932. A statesman between France and Europe . Rentsch, Erlenbach / Zurich 1973, pp. 624–632.
- ↑ Philipp Heyde: The end of the reparations. Germany, France and the Young Plan 1929–1932 . Schöningh, Paderborn 1998, pp. 268 and 372.
- ↑ Philipp Heyde: The end of the reparations. Germany, France and the Young Plan 1929–1932 . Schöningh, Paderborn 1998, p. 341.
- ↑ Ferdinand Siebert: Aristide Briand 1862-1932. A statesman between France and Europe . Rentsch, Erlenbach / Zurich 1973, p. 689.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Briand, Aristide |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 28, 1862 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Nantes , France |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 7, 1932 |
| Place of death | Paris , France |