Ernest Constans

Ernest Constans

Jean Antoine Ernest Constans (born May 3, 1833 in Béziers , † April 7, 1913 in Paris ) was a French statesman. From May 1880 to November 1881 and from February 1889 to February 1892 (with a 17-day break in March 1890) he was Minister of the Interior.

Life

Ernest Constans, son of Armand and Marie Victoire Constans Galtié, first studied law, was in 1854 in Toulouse in this discipline licentiate and received three years later a doctorate. On February 19, 1857, he married Magdeleine Masbou's daughter, a lawyer, in Sainte-Croix in Aveyron and practiced as a lawyer in Toulouse in 1861. He then turned to trading and settled in Barcelona . After several unsuccessful undertakings he left Spain and worked as an associate professor of law at the faculties of Douai , Dijon and Toulouse. In the latter city he held several municipal offices; so he was there until 1873 municipal councilor and adjunct and made great contributions to the establishment of lay schools.

Constans was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in Toulouse in February 1876 , where he joined the Union Républicaine . In October 1877 he was re-elected as a member of parliament. In 1879 he was appointed Undersecretary of State in the Interior Ministry in the Freycinet cabinet and, on May 17, 1880, after Lepère's resignation, he was appointed Interior Minister himself. He was under Gambetta's influence and, as he urged the Justice Minister Jules Cazot and the War Minister Jean Joseph Farre against Freycinet for the immediate implementation of the March decrees against the unauthorized congregations, Freycinet's resignation. With the formation of the cabinet led by Jules Ferry (September 23, 1880) Constans took over the Ministry of the Interior again, but resigned with Ferry on November 14, 1881.

In the Chamber, Constans always took an opportunist position, which attracted him to the hostility of the radicals, who forced him to resign in April 1888 the post of first Governor General of French Indochina , which he had obtained in November 1887 , as incompatible with that of a MP. On February 22nd, 1889, he joined the Tirard cabinet as Minister of the Interior , immediately took action against General Boulanger and his supporters, and on April 3rd, 1889, had the Ligue des Patriotes dissolved. That Boulanger was convicted and his party suffered a heavy defeat in the September 1889 elections was largely due to the influence of Constans. So the shaken republic was fortified again.

On December 29, 1889, Constans was elected senator from the Haute-Garonne department . When Tirard showed an indulgence that was detrimental to the reputation of the state power towards the radicals, Constans disagreed on the Council of Ministers and resigned as Minister of the Interior at the first opportunity on March 1, 1890. With him the Tirard Cabinet lost its last hold. After this was overturned on March 14, 1890 and Freycinet had received the order from President Marie François Sadi Carnot to form a new ministry, Constans took over the portfolio of the interior again on March 17. He was sharply attacked by part of the press and by members of the Boulanger Party, but did not resign from his ministerial post until the whole of Freycinet's cabinet submitted his dismissal on February 26, 1892 for a defeat in the Chamber. Constans was not reinstated in the cabinet that was constituted under Loubet's presidency on February 28, 1892.

On December 27, 1898, Constans became French ambassador to Constantinople and held this position until June 1909. He died on April 7, 1913 at the age of almost 80 in Paris.

literature

• Ernest Constans . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 4, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 254.

Web links

• Ernest Constans on the Assemblée nationale website