Charles Jonnart

Charles Jonnart (1918)

Charles Célestin Auguste Jonnart (born December 27, 1857 in Fléchin , Pas-de-Calais department , † September 30, 1927 in Paris ) was a French politician and diplomat during the Third Republic .

Jonnart studied law in Paris and at the École des sciences politiques. Léon Gambetta appointed him to the cabinet of the Governor General of Algeria, Louis Tirman , in 1881 . In 1884 Jonnart returned to France and became Director of Algerian Affairs in the Ministry of the Interior. In 1886 he was appointed General Councilor of the Pas-de-Calais department for the canton of Fauquembergues . In the elections to the Chamber of Deputies in 1889 , he won a seat for the Republicans in the Pas-de-Calais department, which he was to keep until 1914. Jean Casimir-Périer appointed him Minister for Public Works in December 1893, but left the government on May 30, 1894.

After Jonnart recovered from a serious car accident, Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau appointed him Governor General of Algeria in October 1900. He held the post with a two-year break until 1911. On January 22, 1913, Aristide Briand appointed him Foreign Minister; he was only able to exercise this post for a short time until the fall of the government on March 23, 1913 by the Senate .

In 1914 Jonnart was accepted into the French Senate, where he chaired the Committee on Foreign Affairs. During the First World War Jonnart was as an envoy of the Entente sent -Mächte with military powers to Greece to the abdication of Constantine I drive. Georges Clemenceau sent him again in 1918 as governor general to Algeria to raise fresh troops. In 1919 he left Algeria for good and returned to Europe. When relations between the Third Republic and the Catholic Church began to relax in the early 1920s, Jonnart was the first French ambassador to the Holy See from 1921 to 1923 since diplomatic relations were broken off in 1904 .

Since 1918 a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques , he was admitted to the Académie française on April 19, 1923 after a stormy vote . The Action française stole the ballot papers after the election and published a list of the members who voted for Jonnart. Since then, the ballot papers have been burned immediately after the election.

literature

• Jean Jolly (ed.): Dictionnaire des Parlamentaires Français, Notices Biographiques sur les Ministres, Sénateurs et Dépués Français de 1889 à 1940 . Paris 1960.

Web links

• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
• Newspaper article about Charles Jonnart in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .