Claude Hettier de Boislambert

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Claude André Charles Antoine Marie Hettier de Boislambert (born July 26, 1906 in Hérouvillette ( Département Calvados ), † February 22, 1986 in Paris ) was a French resistance fighter and companion of Charles de Gaulle . He was also state governor and state commissioner of Rhineland-Palatinate from 1946 to 1951 .

Youth and pre-war

De Boislambert was born on July 26, 1906 in Hérouvillette, a village not far from Ranville in the Calvados department. His family was originally from Caen . He first studied political science at the École libre des sciences politiques in Paris before becoming a journalist. From 1926 and 1939 he made various trips to Central Africa, Scandinavia, Central Europe and the Middle East, where he mainly worked as a hunter. He ran an estate in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont until he began his service as a cavalry lieutenant in 1939 as part of the mobilization .

Resistance and World War II

After the outbreak of the Second World War he went to London in 1940 on behalf of the British Army , where General Charles de Gaulle appointed him liaison officer in North Africa. In August 1940, Hettier de Boislambert took part in a mission together with Major General Leclerc and René Pleven to pool the forces of the Resistance in the French colonies of Cameroon and French Equatorial Africa . When the colonies joined Free France , he took command in Pointe-Noire . After the failure of Operation Menace , before which Hettier de Boislambert tried to establish contact with potential supporters, he was arrested on September 30, 1940 in Dakar and interrogated there for a few weeks by representatives of the Vichy authorities . He was then transferred to France, where he spent nine months in the prisons of Marseille , Clermont-Ferrand and Granat , where he was finally tried before a military tribunal that sentenced him to death on June 13, 1941. The Pétain government converted the sentence into life-long forced labor. Hettier de Boislambert served his sentence first in Saint-Etienne , then in Gannat. He escaped from the labor camp in December 1942 and returned to de Gaulle's service after two months in the French underground.

In January 1943 de Boislambert accompanied de Gaulle to the Casablanca Conference . He then led various missions in Africa. Then he took part in the Mission militaire française de liaison administrative (MMLA), which was supposed to serve, among other things, to restore internal security, health care and communication with the civilian population when the Allied troops marched in. In this role he worked in the liberated cities of Caen , Saint-Lô and Rennes , where he was finally wounded on August 2, 1944. At the end of 1944 he took part in the Assemblée consultative provisoire in Paris, a provisional council meeting founded by de Gaulle in Algiers the previous year, and there he headed the group of external resistance.

Governor and State Commissioner in Rhineland-Palatinate

Since Hettier de Boislambert had knowledge of the German language and the country, de Gaulle appointed him on December 1, 1945 as governor for the former Prussian administrative districts of Trier and Koblenz, from which the Higher Presidium of Rhineland-Hesse-Nassau was formed on January 3, 1946 . Hettier de Boislambert took up his residence in Schloss Bassenheim ; The passionate big game hunter used the Adenau Forestry Office as a "hunting reserve", and appointed Mariano Freiherr von Droste zu Hülshoff as its director (he then arranged for the hunting ground to be leased to his friend François Sommer ). A few days after Ordinance No. 57 was promulgated on August 30, 1946, through which the state of Rhineland-Palatinate was created, he was appointed governor. This made him the highest representative of the French occupying power in the country. In this role, he regulated denazification and promoted Trier's candidacy as a university location . In 1946 he approved the founding of the Christian Democratic Party (CDP), which the following year merged with the CDU to form a common umbrella organization, the founding of the Liberal Party (later FDP ), and the re-establishment of the SPD and KPD . However, he himself declared that he was not a democrat. Hettier de Boislambert had the reputation of an authoritarian king of Rhineland-Palatinate , but campaigned for the interests of the country and criticized the grievances of the French occupation. After the occupation statute came into force in 1949, his position changed to that of a state commissioner, he continued to represent France in Rhineland-Palatinate. André François-Poncet said goodbye to him in April 1951 .

MP, diplomat and city councilor in France

From June 17, 1951 to December 1, 1955, Hettier de Boislambert was a member of the French National Assembly , where he represented the Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF) party founded by de Gaulle in 1947 . There he was a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Commission on Overseas Territories. In 1954 he served a UN mission . From 1960 he worked in the diplomatic service, first in the Mali Federation and after its collapse as French ambassador to Senegal , which he remained until 1962. He then served as a member of the city council of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.

Honorary positions

From 1962 to 1978 Hettier de Boislambert was Chancellor of the Ordre de la Liberation . Together with his wife Odette de Boislambert, he founded the Musée de l'Ordre de la Liberation in 1970.

Hettier de Boislambert was buried in Sallenelles in the Calvados department .

Awards

Hettier de Boislambert was honored with the following awards, among others:

Publications (selection)

  • C. Hettier de Boislambert. Photographies de J. Behnke. L'Ile aux Cerfs. Nouvelles Éditions de la Toison d'or, Paris 1951.
  • A travers bois. Delagrave, Paris 1968.
  • Les fers de l'espoir. Plon, Paris 1978, ISBN 2-259-00337-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Entry on Hettier de Boislambert, Claude in the Rhineland-Palatinate personal database , accessed on March 20, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b c Claude Hettier de Boislambert , accessed September 9, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b Edgar Wagner: "Lean on! Have confidence!" About the creation of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and its contribution to the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany. Issue 35 of the publication series of the Landtag Rhineland-Palatinate, 2007, ISBN 978-3-9811001-2-9 . P.56
  4. ↑ Michael Kißener: Brief history of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate 1945-2005 . DRW-Verl. Weinbrenner, Braun, Karlsruhe 2006, ISBN 3-7650-8345-3 , p. 48 .
  5. ^ Mariano Freiherr von Droste zu Hülshoff: Memoirs, Archive Wilderich von Droste zu Hülshoff
  6. ↑ a b c Claude Hettier de Boislambert ordredelaliberation.fr, accessed on September 9, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Hettier de Boislambert, Claude
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hettier de Boislambert, Claude André Charles Antoine Marie (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French resistance fighter, military governor in the Rhineland and Rhineland-Palatinate, politician, member of the National Assembly
DATE OF BIRTH July 26, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Hérouvillette , Calvados department
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1986
Place of death Paris