Henri Brisson

Henri Brisson

Eugène Henri Brisson (born July 31, 1835 in Bourges , † April 13, 1912 in Paris ) was a French politician and two-time Prime Minister of France .

Early political career

Like his father, Eugène Henri Brisson studied law and became a lawyer in Paris in 1859. At the same time, he worked for the Temps and the Avenir national and founded the Revue politique in 1868 with Paul Challemel-Lacour and François Allain-Targé , which was suppressed that same year.

After the fall of the Second Empire on September 4, 1870, Brisson became vice mayor of Paris , but was dismissed after the revolt of October 31, 1870. On February 8, 1871, he was elected a member of the National Assembly as a representative of the extreme left of the Seine department . As a member of parliament, he represented anti-clerical theses and advocated elementary school education. In September 1871 he unsuccessfully applied for a general amnesty for political offenses and, due to his radical statements in 1872, censored the Chamber. Since 1876 he was a member of the Chamber of Deputies , belonged there to the Union républicaine and was elected President. In January 1879 he became second vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies and on February 27, 1879 successor to Léon Gambetta , his protector, as chairman of the budget commission. He was also the reporter on the indictment against the ministers of May 16 and November 23, 1877 and on Ferry's education laws .

Prime Minister 1885–1886 and 1898

When Gambetta formed a cabinet in November 1881, Brisson was elected President of the Chamber of Deputies in his place and remained so after Gambetta's overthrow, just as he otherwise made himself independent of the latter and gained reputation through prudence and legality. Brisson avoided taking over a ministry for a long time in order to be able to hold the presidency of the French Republic for himself . After the fall of Ferry, however, he resigned as President of the Chamber of Deputies and, in order not to endanger the unity of the republican parties, became Ferry's successor Prime Minister on April 6, 1885. At the same time he also took over the Ministry of Justice . In relation to the request for the eviction of Tongking , Brisson stated that his cabinet was maintaining patronage over Tongking and Annam and demanded the granting of the full credit of 79 million francs. The Chamber approved it on December 24, 1885, but only with a wafer-thin majority of four votes. This caused Brisson, who also received only 68 votes in the election of the President of the Republic on December 28, 1885, to submit his resignation and to make room for Charles de Freycinet's cabinet on January 7, 1886 . After Jules Grévy's resignation , he received only 26 votes in the election of the new president on December 3, 1887.

Nevertheless, Brisson remained a public figure and from 1892 to 1893 he chaired the parliamentary commission of inquiry to investigate the Panama scandal . After the assassination of President Marie François Sadi Carnot , he ran again unsuccessfully for the office of President on June 27, 1894; he received 191 votes on that occasion. In December 1894, however, he was re-elected President of the Chamber of Deputies. He held this office until he formed a cabinet for the second time as Prime Minister on June 28, 1898. As during his first term in office, Brisson took on an additional portfolio as head of the Interior Ministry . At that time France was affected by the Dreyfus affair . His sincerity in resolving the affair earned him great respect among the population. Nevertheless, he and his cabinet had to resign on November 1, 1898.

A recognized statesman

As a leader of the radicals, Brisson supported the subsequent Prime Ministers Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau and Émile Combes, especially with bills on religious order and the separation of church and state. In 1899, Brisson ran again unsuccessfully for the office of President of the French Republic. From January 1904 to January 1905 he was President of the Chamber of Deputies for the third time. At the beginning of June 1906, the now 71-year-old statesman was elected for the fourth time, with 500 of 581 votes, to the same office that he held until his death on April 13, 1912.

literature

• Henri Brisson . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 3, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 436.