Henri Briffod

Henri Briffod (born December 20, 1913 in Bonneville , † June 30, 1987 ibid) was a French politician of the SFIO . From 1951 to 1958 he was a member of the National Assembly . In World War II he took part in the resistance against the German occupiers .

Life and career

Early life and World War II

Briffod, whose father Louis was mayor of his hometown Bonneville, left his hometown in the southeastern French department of Haute-Savoie to study law in the capital Paris . After graduation, he worked as a lawyer from 1936 and joined the socialist party SFIO around the same time. In September 1939, with the start of World War II, he was drafted into the military. He became a German prisoner of war and had to spend it in a camp in Austria before he could return to his home country in December 1940 due to illness.

After his return he initially went back to his profession as a lawyer, but at the same time joined a resistance movement against the German occupation forces. He escaped the resulting persecution, first by Italians and then by the Germans, by fleeing underground. In his home region of Faucigny , he was responsible for the movement and was also one of the leading figures at the departmental level. For his services during this time he was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance and accepted into the Legion of Honor .

Career in politics

After the end of the war, Briffod took over the chairmanship of the Bar Association of the Haute-Savoie department in 1945 and was also elected to the general council of the same administrative unit. In October 1945 he also took second position on the departmental list of socialists for the constituent national assembly, but did not make it. When he ran for the first regular post-war parliament in November of the following year, he failed again. On the third attempt in 1951, he was at the top of a list made up of SFIO and two smaller parties. This won an absolute majority in Haute-Savoie, with which he was able to move into the Paris Parliament with a clear result. From then on, the lawyer worked there in the Commission for Justice and Legislation, but also dealt with politics relating to the European Coal and Steel Community .

In the elections in January 1956, he ran for re-election under changed conditions. The compilation of the lists had shifted to a great extent, so that he only received 15.9 percent of the votes and thus missed the recovery. Four months later, however, one of the electoral alliances that had been concluded was declared illegal, which is why the election of MP Maurice Duchoud was canceled in Briffod's favor. As a result, he was again a member of the parliament until new elections were due in 1958 with the establishment of the Fifth Republic . He was no longer active in national politics and died in 1987 at the age of 73.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sycomore
2. ↑ Base de données historique des anciens députés , assemblee-nationale.fr