Edgar Faure

Edgar Faure (1955)

Edgar Jean Vincent Barthélemy Faure (born August 18, 1908 in Béziers , Département Hérault , † March 30, 1988 in Paris ) was a French politician. During the Fourth Republic, he was Prime Minister for a short time as a member of the Parti radical in 1952 and 1955/56. In the Fifth Republic he was a member of the Senate as a representative of the Gaullists ( UNR , UDR , RPR ) from 1959–66; 1966–68 he was Minister of Agriculture, 1968–69 Education, 1972–73 Minister of Social Affairs; 1973–78 President of the National Assembly ; from 1974 president of the Franche-Comté region . From 1979 to 1984 he was a member of the European Parliament for the liberal UDF , and from 1980 until his death again as a senator.

Life

He studied law in Paris and at the age of 21 was the youngest lawyer in France at the time. In 1931 Faure married Lucie Meyer , with whom he had two daughters. He started his political engagement in the ranks of the left-wing, anti-clerical Radical Party ( Parti républicain, radical et radical-socialiste , PRS), the leading party of the Third Republic , which provided the majority of prime ministers between 1900 and 1940.

During the Second World War and the German occupation , Faure joined the Resistance and fled to Algiers in 1942 to the headquarters of General Charles de Gaulle , who made him head of the Service législatif of the Gouvernement provisoire de la République Française (GPRF). In 1945 he was French deputy chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trial . 1961 doctorate Faure with a thesis on the fiscal system under the Roman emperor Diocletian , in 1962 he received the teaching license of legal history and Roman law .

Political Activity in the Fourth Republic

In 1946 Faure was elected to the Constituent National Assembly of the Fourth Republic as a member of the Parti radical (PRS). After the formation of a three-party coalition of socialists ( SFIO ), communists ( PCF ) and the Christian-democratically oriented Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP; “People's Republicans”), the radicals initially found themselves in an outsider position. When the communists were ousted from government in 1947, despite falling popularity and less than 10 percent of the vote, the radicals were often able to play a disproportionately important role in the formation of the French government, since none of the other groups was able to achieve a clear majority to get.

Faure was the leader of the more conservative wing of the party opposed by the left wing under Pierre Mendès France . In everyday politics, Faure was called “la girouette” (the weather vane). From 1949 to 1950 he was State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, then Minister of Budget until 1951, then Minister of Justice until 1952. Edgar Faure was Prime Minister (Président du Conseil des ministres) from January to February 1952 . He headed a center-right coalition made up of the PRS, the Christian Democratic MRP and the liberal-conservative CNIP , which was overthrown after a month by a vote of no confidence. From 1953 to 1955 he was Minister of Finance and Economics.

His second term as head of government followed from February 1955 to January 1956. His cabinet included ministers from the PRS, MRP, CNIP, UDSR and URAS (a split from the Gaullists ). The later Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor from the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain was State Secretary under Faure. During his reign, the Messina Conference took place in June 1955 , which prepared the establishment of the EU's predecessors, the European Economic Community (EEC) and Euratom . At the Geneva summit conference in July 1955, as French head of government, he was one of the “big four” alongside Dwight D. Eisenhower (USA), Nikolai Bulganin (Soviet Union) and Anthony Eden (Great Britain).

Faures government gradually prepared for the independence of the French protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia. She negotiated unofficially with the imprisoned Tunisian nationalist leader Habib Bourguiba , who was released and returned to Tunis in June 1955. Shortly thereafter, Tunisia was granted internal autonomy by treaty. With the exiled Moroccan Sultan Mohammed V , Faure concluded a treaty on indépendance dans l'interdépendance ("independence in mutual dependence") in November 1955 , which allowed the sultan to return to his home country.

At the end of 1955 Faure proposed to President René Coty that the National Assembly be dissolved and entered into an electoral alliance with the center-right parties (CNIP, MRP). He was then expelled from the Radical Party at the instigation of Mendès-France. Mendès-France led the PRS into the front républicain with the socialists, which after the elections formed a government coalition under Guy Mollet . Instead, Faure took over the chairmanship of the Rassemblement des gauches républicaines (RGR), which he converted from an electoral alliance (to which the Parti radical had also belonged) into a separate party in which the opponents of Mendès-Frances rallied among the radicals. The RGR received only 12 seats in the National Assembly, but Faure himself was re-elected. Faure was an early proponent of General de Gaulle's return to French politics. He stated: “The Algerian war is a fourth dimension problem. And there is only one fourth dimension man who can solve it ”.

Political activity in the Fifth Republic

Although he supported de Gaulle's seizure of power in 1958, Faure initially kept his distance from the Gaullist UNR party . With the landslide election in December 1958, he resigned from the National Assembly. He was elected to the French Senate as a representative of the opposition in April 1959, and voted “no” in the 1962 constitutional referendum on the introduction of direct elections for the state president. In the period that followed, however, he approached the Gaullists. De Gaulle sent Faure on an unofficial mission to the People's Republic of China in 1963 to prepare for diplomatic relations between Paris and Beijing in 1964. In the 1965 presidential election, Faure spoke out in favor of de Gaulle's re-election, and in the same year he was re-elected as senator. In January 1966 he entered the government of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou as Minister of Agriculture .

Edgar Faure (left) together with UNESCO Director General René Maheu , 1972

After the May 1968 riots , President de Gaulle entrusted him with the difficult office of Minister for National Education in the Couve de Murville cabinet . In this position he was responsible for the law on the orientation of higher education of November 12, 1968, which is also known as Loi Faure . This gave universities and colleges greater autonomy. Faculties were replaced by unités d'enseignement et de recherche (UER; units of teaching and research), which were supposed to network research and teaching more closely and to promote interdisciplinary work. In addition, elected university councils were introduced, in which not only the professors but also representatives of the students, technical and administrative staff were included.

In the early 1970s, Faure headed an international UNESCO commission on the goals and development of the education system. In 1972, this set up an “overall education plan” under the title Learning to be. The World of Education Today and Tomorrow (German title "Learn to live. What school has to do today"), also known as the Faure Report . In the Messmer I cabinet , Faure was Ministre d'État (that is, one of the highest-ranking ministers) from 1972-73 and headed the Ministry of Social Affairs. From 1973 to 1978 Faure held the office of President of the National Assembly . As the highest-ranking French parliamentarian, he traveled to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in January 1974 .

The basis of his political activities was formed by an accumulation of national and local mandates, which is common in France: from 1947 to 1970 Faure held the office of mayor of the small community of Port-Lesney in the Jura department and was also president of the general council of the department from 1949 to 1967 . From 1971 to 1977 he was mayor of the city of Pontarlier and again of Port-Lesney from 1983 until his death in 1988. After the founding of the French regions , he was also the first president of the regional council of the Franche-Comté region from 1974 until his death (with a short break in 1981/82) .

Edgar Faure as Senator

From 1979 to 1984 he was a member of the first elected European Parliament . He was elected from the list of the Union pour la démocratie française (UDF) led by Simone Veil and belonged to the Liberal and Democratic Group in the European Parliament. He was also deputy chairman of the Committee on Regional Policy and Spatial Planning. 1980 Faure was re-elected to the French Senate, of which he was a member until his death. After two years of non-faction, he joined the Senate parliamentary group Gauche démocratique (“democratic left”) in 1982 , which mainly included senators from the Parti radical and the Mouvement des radicaux de gauche . So Faure returned to his former political home at the end of his life.

Faure died in Paris at the age of 79 and was buried there on the Cimetière de Passy .

Political mandates

Membership in the National Assembly and Senate :

• 1946 to 1958 member of the Jura department
• 1959 to 1967 Senator for the Jura department
• 1967 to 1980 member of the Doubs department
• 1980 to 1988 Senator for the Doubs department

Membership in the European Parliament :

• Member of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1984

Offices in regional policy :

• 1947 to 1971 Mayor of Port-Lesney (Jura)
• 1949 to 1967 President of the General Council of the Jura Department
• 1967 to 1979 member of the Conseil Général des Départements Doubs
• 1971 to 1977 mayor of Pontarlier
• 1974 to 1981 President of the Regional Council of Franche-Comté
• 1982 to 1988 President of the Regional Council of Franche-Comté
• 1983 to 1988 Mayor of Port-Lesney

Government Offices :

• Finance Minister (1950–51)
• Prime Minister (1952)
• Foreign Minister (1955)
• Prime Minister (1955–56)
• Minister of Agriculture (1966)
• Minister of Education (1968)
• Minister of Social Affairs (1969)
• President of the National Assembly (1973-78)

In 1978 he became a member of the Académie française . He wrote political books but also crime novels under the pseudonym E. Sanday.

Fonts

• The serpent et la tortue, the problems of the Chine popular . Juillard, 1957
• La disgrâce de Turgot . Gallimard, 1961
• La capitation de Dioclétien . Sirey 1961
• Prévoir le présent, Gallimard . 1966
• L'éducation nationale et la participation . Plon, 1968
• Philosophy d'une réforme . Plon, 1969
• L'âme du combat . Fayard, 1969
• Ce que je crois . Grasset, 1971
• Pour un nouveau contrat social . Seuil, 1973
• Au-delà du dialogue with Philippe Sollers . Balland, 1977
• La banqueroute de Law . Gallimard, 1977
• La philosophie de Karl Popper et la société politique d'ouverture . Firmin Didot, 1981
• Pascal: le procès des provinciales . Firmin Didot, 1930
• Le pétrole dans la paix et dans la guerre . In: Nouvelle revue critique , 1938
• Mémoires I, Avoir toujours raison, c'est un grand tort . Plon, 1982
• Mémoires II, Si tel doit être mon destin ce soir . Plon, 1984
• Discours prononcé pour la reception de Senghor à l'Académie française , on 29 mars 1984

literature

• Patrice Lestrohan: L'Edgar. Biography d'Edgar Faure (1908–1988). Le Cherche midi, 2007

Web links

Commons : Edgar Faure  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Edgar Faure in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
• Entry on Edgar Faure in the Members' database of the European Parliament

Individual evidence

1. ^ Original: La Guerre d'Algérie est unproblemème de la quatrième dimension. Et il n'y a qu'un homme de la quatrième dimension pour le résoudre . Quoted from Patrice Lestrohan: L'Edgar. Biography d'Edgar Faure (1908–1988). Le Cherche midi, 2007, p. 209.
2. ^ William F. Edmiston, Annie Dumenil: La France contemporaine. 4th edition, Heinle Cengage Learning, Boston 2010, p. 253.
3. ↑ Georg Hanf: "Rediscovered - Reread": Learning to be. The world of education today and tomorrow. In: BWP , No. 4/2011, p. 59.
4. ↑ Christian Wenkel: In search of a "different Germany". The relationship between France and the GDR in the field of tension between perception and diplomacy. de Gruyter Oldenbourg, Munich 2014, p. 372.
5. ↑ Élus élections européennes 1979. France Politique, March 21, 2019.
6. ^ Entry on Edgar Faure in the European Parliament 's database of representatives

predecessor	Office	successor
René Pleven Pierre Mendès France	Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic January 20, 1952 - February 29, 1952 February 23, 1955 - January 24, 1956	Antoine Pinay Guy Mollet

predecessor	Office	successor
Pierre Mendès France	Foreign Minister of France January 20, 1955 - February 23, 1955	Antoine Pinay

predecessor	Office	successor
René Maier Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury Pierre Pflimlin	Minister of Finance of France January 20, 1952 - March 8, 1952 June 28, 1953 - January 20, 1955 May 14, 1958 - June 1, 1958	Antoine Pinay Robert Buron Antoine Pinay

predecessor	Office	successor
Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury	Interior Minister of France December 1, 1955 - February 1, 1956	Jean Gilbert-Jules

predecessor	Office	successor
René Maier	Minister of Justice of France 11 August 1951 - 20 January 1952	Léon Martinaud-Déplat

predecessor	Office	successor
Achille Peretti	President of the French National Assembly April 2, 1973 - April 3, 1978	Jacques Chaban-Delmas