Bernard Cornut-Gentille

Bernard Cornut-Gentille (born July 26, 1909 in Brest , Département Finistère , † January 21, 1992 in Paris ) was a French colonial administrator , diplomat and politician of the Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF) and later the Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR ), who was Governor General of French Equatorial Africa from 1948 to 1951, Governor General of French West Africa between 1952 and 1956 , Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York in 1956 and Ambassador to Argentina between 1957 and 1958 .

He was a member of the National Assembly between 1958 and 1968 and held the post of Minister for Overseas Territories from 1958 to 1959 and the post of Minister for Post and Telecommunications between 1959 and 1960. In addition, he was mayor of Cannes from 1959 to 1968 and from 1971 to 1978 , and from 1973 to 1978 again a member of the National Assembly.

Life

Studies, administrative officer and World War II

Proclamation of Cornut-Gentille as prefect of the Ille-et-Vilaine department , August 4, 1944

Cornut-Gentille was the son of a chief commissioner of the navy and the grandson of the sea captain Jean Joseph Alfred Cornut-Gentille, who was in command of the French troops in Gabon between 1883 and 1885 . After attending school, he studied at the private college École libre des sciences politiques , founded by Émile Boutmy in 1872, from which he graduated with a degree in law. He then began his professional career in 1935 in the prefecture of the Loir-et-Cher department , where he was first deputy head of cabinet and shortly thereafter head of the prefect’s cabinet. On April 21, 1937, he married Luce Marsaud in the presence of the former Prime Minister Camille Chautemps and Léon Meyer , who was then both a member of the National Assembly and Mayor of Le Havre .

In August 1938, Cornut-Gentille became head of the Secretariat of Chautemps, who had been Vice Prime Minister since April 10, 1938. In January 1939 he was promoted to sub-prefect (Sous-préfet) before he was called up for military service on September 2, 1939 after the outbreak of World War II . During the French campaign of the German Wehrmacht he was wounded and taken prisoner of war .

After his convalescence in the military hospital of Béthune , he returned to the civil service in November 1940 and was initially sub-prefect of the Arrondissement of Vouziers before he became head of cabinet of the prefect of the north in 1941 . Thereupon he became sub-prefect of the arrondissement Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in 1942, some time later in 1942 head of cabinet of Henri Ingrand , who was delegate prefect to the interior minister, and finally in 1943 sub-prefect of the arrondissement of Reims . He resigned from this position on May 16, 1943 in order to become politically and militarily involved in the Resistance movement alongside Émile Bollaert , who was then General Delegate of the French Committee for National Liberation in occupied France (Zone occupée) . For his services in the resistance movement, he was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance .

After taking part in the liberation of Rennes with Claude Hettier de Boislambert , he became prefect of the Ille-et-Vilaine department in August 1944 , but a month later in September 1944 he was prefect of the Somme department , before becoming prefect at the end of the war in May 1945 of the Bas-Rhin department .

Fourth republic

Governor General in Africa

In September 1947, Cornut-Gentille moved to the Ministry of the Interior, where he became head of the department for departmental and municipal affairs. During this time he joined the Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF) founded by Charles de Gaulle , which is an opposition and alternative to the three governing parties (Troisième Force) consisting of Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO), Union démocratique et socialiste de la Résistance (UDSR) and Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP) of the young Fourth Republic understood.

On March 26, 1948, Bernard Cornut-Gentille was appointed Governor General of French Equatorial Africa (Afrique équatoriale française) to succeed Jean Louis Marie André Soucadaux and held this office until he was replaced by Paul Chauvet on September 21, 1951. In this capacity he had good relations with François Mitterrand , who was Minister for Overseas Territories from July 10, 1950 to August 12, 1951.

He then succeeded Paul Béachard as Governor General of French West Africa (Afrique occidentale française) on September 21, 1951 , after Paul Chauvet had held this position on May 24, 1951. He stayed at this post until he was replaced by Gaston Cusin on June 5, 1956. In this position, he organized General de Gaulle's visit to French West Africa in March 1953, thereby gaining his attention.

Ambassador and Minister for the Overseas Territories

In June 1956, Cornut-Gentille succeeded Hervé Alphand as Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York City with the rank of Ambassador and held this diplomatic position until he was replaced by Guillaume Georges-Picot in September 1956. During this time he also served as France's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Security Council .

In 1957 he succeeded Philippe Baudet as ambassador to Argentina (Ambassadeurs de France en Argentine) and worked there until he was replaced by Armand de Blanquet du Chalay in June 1958.

After his return to France, Cornut-Gentille was appointed by Prime Minister de Gaulle as Minister for the Overseas Territories (Ministre de la France d'Outre-Mer) to his third cabinet on June 9, 1958 , to which he was appointed until the end of his term on June 8 , 1958 January 1959 belonged to. Its main task was to transform the old Union française into a free community consisting of the French Republic and its old colonies south of the Sahara. This conversion was largely successful, as only Guinea under Ahmed Sékou Touré insisted on its independence. This was mainly due to the report of the High Commissioner in French West Africa, Pierre Messmer , who refused to take back General de Gaulle's call to Touré on August 25, 1958, which led to de Gaulle's break with the leader of Guinea. As a result, Guinea decided in a referendum on September 28, 1958, as the only French colony in Africa to achieve full independence. This was followed by the proclamation of the First Republic on October 2, 1958, with Ahmed Sékou Touré as President.

Fifth Republic

Member of the National Assembly and Minister in the Debre Cabinet

In the elections for the first National Assembly of the Fifth French Republic, founded on October 5, 1958, on November 30, 1958, Cornut-Gentille stood as a candidate on the list of the Gaullist Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR) in the fifth constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes department , in particular from the cities of Antibes and Cannes. In the second ballot, he achieved a clear majority with 31,915 votes in front of his opponent from the Parti communiste français (PCF), Henri Pourtalet , who received 10,369 votes. He benefited from the fact that the runner-up in the first ballot and Vice-Mayor of Cannes, Jean-Pierre Verdet, had decided not to run in the second ballot. He initially held this mandate until February 8, 1959.

A month earlier, Bernard Cornut-Gentille had been appointed by Prime Minister Michel Debre as Minister for Post and Telecommunications (Ministre des postes et télécommunications) in his cabinet . However, he resigned from this ministerial office on February 5, 1960 in protest against President de Gaulle's policy in the Algerian war. Michel Maurice-Bokanowski was then appointed as his successor .

Mayor of Cannes and re-election as MP

At the same time, Cornut-Gentille was elected Mayor of Cannes for the first time in March 1959 and initially held this office until 1968. In March 1961, despite his critical stance against the President's Algerian policy, he was re-elected Mayor of Cannes.

In the elections of November 18, 1962, he broke with Gaullism and entered the fifth constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes department as a non-party and was able to maintain his mandate against his challenger from the UNR, René Bussoz, in the first ballot. After his return to the Palais Bourbon , he did not join any parliamentary group , but later voted temporarily with the Center démocrate founded by Jean Lecanuet in 1966 . During this electoral term, in addition to his mayor's office, he was particularly committed to local political issues and was a member of the Industry and Trade Committee (Commission de la production et des échanges) . In 1963 he was also elected a member of the General Council of the Alpes-Maritimes Department, to which he was a member until 1976, where he was a key member of the Committee for Regional Economic Development of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region for ten years .

In March 1965, Cornut-Gentille was re-elected Mayor of Canns. In addition, he was re-elected a member of the National Assembly on March 12, 1967, and until May 30, 1968 again represented the fifth constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes as a non-party member, again winning in the second ballot against the candidate of the PCF, the previous one Third place in the first round of voting was.

May 1968 and a temporary withdrawal from politics

The political crisis following the student riots in May 1968 changed the political situation. Cornut-Gentille saw the events in the spring of 1968 as a reckoning with Gaullism and its leader, President de Gaulle. This attitude led to his isolation in the city council of Cannes, so that he resigned as mayor soon afterwards and also decided not to run again in the elections to the National Assembly in June 1968. His successor as Mayor of Cannes was then André Vouillon in 1968.

However, these elections led to a strengthening of Gaullism, whose political party, the Union des Démocrates pour la République (UDR), obtained a clear majority in the National Assembly with 293 of the 487 seats in the elections of June 23 and 30, 1968. Also from the presidential election on June 1 and 15, 1969 , Georges Pompidou emerged as a representative of Gaullism.

Re-election as Mayor of Cannes and MP

In March 1970, Cornut-Gentille was re-elected as a member of the General Council of the Alpes-Maritimes Department and also won the elections for Mayor of Cannes in 1971, so that he replaced his own successor André Vouillon.

In the elections of spring 1973 he ran again as a non-party member for the National Assembly in the fifth constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes department. His main challenger was former MP Pierre Pasquini , who ran for the UDR. In his election campaign, Cornut-Gentille once again focused on local issues, but also called for a change in the president's government policy. He was re-elected a member of parliament on March 11, 1973 with a narrow result in the second ballot and was a member of the National Assembly until April 2, 1978. He once again did not join any political group and this time became a member of the Committee on Finance, Economics and Planning (Commission des finances, de l'économie générale et du plan) . His increasing stance in favor of the political left increasingly removed him from his voters and supporters in his department, which was politically mostly center-right.

Election defeats in 1978 and 1981

He was re-elected mayor of Cannes in 1977 and ran again in the National Assembly elections in March 1978. However, he was beaten by Louise Moreau , who ran for the ruling Union pour la démocratie française (UDF) of the current President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing . In the second ballot on March 19, 1978, Louise Moreau received 48,338 votes, while Cornut-Gentille received 42,859 votes. Disappointed at this election defeat, he then resigned as mayor of Cannes, which was taken over by Georges-Charles Ladeveze.

In the elections to the National Assembly on June 14 and 21, 1981, Cornut-Gentille ran for re-entry into parliament in the fifth constituency of the Alpes-Maritimes department. This time he suffered a narrow defeat of just 614 votes to Louise Moreau, which this time received 43,804 votes, while he himself got 43,190 votes. After this renewed defeat, he finally withdrew from political life.

For his many years of service, he became commander of the Legion of Honor . His nephew François Cornut-Gentille has been a member of the National Assembly since 1993, where he represents the second constituency of the Haute-Marne department .

Web links

• Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly
• Short biography in rulers.org
• French Ministeries (rulers.org) *

Individual evidence

1. ^ Governors-general of French Equatorial Africa in rulers.org
2. ^ Governors-general of French West Africa in rulers.org
3. ^ Debré cabinet