Henri Queuille

Henri Queuille (1929)

Queille (left) with Pierre Laval (center) and Louis Barthou (1934)

Henri Queuille (born March 31, 1884 in Neuvic d'Ussel ( Département Corrèze ), † June 15, 1970 in Paris ) was a French politician of the Radical Party .

biography

After studying medicine in Paris, Henri Queuille established himself as a general practitioner in Neuvic in 1908. In 1912 he was elected mayor of Neuvic, in 1913 a member of the General Council of the Corrèze department for the canton of Neuvic and in 1914 a member of the National Assembly . When the First World War broke out , he became a medical officer at the Baccarat hospital . He was involved in the battles of Verdun and the Somme and was awarded the Croix de guerre in September 1916 .

He represented the Corrèze department in the National Assembly until 1935, then in the Senate until 1940 . Between 1924 and 1940 he was State Secretary or Minister in the Ministries for Agriculture, Health, Post and Telecommunications and Public Works several times. In the latter position he carried out the nationalization of the railways (which had already been decided upon) and the creation of the national railway company SNCF .

As a senator, he took part in the joint session of the National Assembly and Senate in Vichy on July 10, 1940 , where he refused to approve the transfer of extraordinary powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain . He then retired to Neuvic, where he founded a company to produce gas from charcoal.

On July 16, 1941, Neuvic was deposed from his mayor's office. After a first unsuccessful attempt, he succeeded in April 1943 on board a plane of the Royal Air Force to travel to London , where he joined the exile government of Charles de Gaulle . A few days after his arrival, he called on the French farmers to resist on the BBC .

In June 1944 he became Minister of State in the first Provisional Government and Deputy de Gaulle. Striving to restore the republican institutions, Henri Queuille devoted himself in the months after the liberation of France to rebuilding the Radical Party, which had suffered greatly from the war and occupation. From 1946 to 1956 he was again a member of the National Assembly. At the same time he held the following government offices:

• Prime Minister (1948–49, 1950, 1951)
• Deputy Prime Minister (1949–50, 1952–54)
• Minister of State (1948 and 1951–52)
• Minister of Public Works (1948)
• Finance Minister (1948–49), also Prime Minister
• Interior Minister (1950–51)

During his reign, France signed the NATO treaty .

For health reasons, Henri Queuille ended his government career in the mid-1950s and also refused to run for the office of President to succeed Vincent Auriol .

In 1956, Henri Queuille fell out with Pierre Mendès France and founded the Center républicain with the right wing of the Radical Party .

meaning

Although he was quite popular as a politician, Henri Queuille is a symbol of the loss of reputation and the failure of the IV Republic . Lasting results of its policy are the SNCF and its contribution to the mechanization of agriculture.

He was the political godfather of two outstanding politicians who repeatedly faced each other as opponents in the Fifth Republic : in 1946 he recommended François Mitterrand as a candidate for the National Assembly in the Nièvre department , and in 1965 he proposed to Jacques Chirac , the parliamentary mandate in his former constituency of Corrèze to strive for.

literature

• Francis de Tarr, Henri Queuille en son temps (1884-1970): biography , éditions de La Table Ronde, 1995.

Web links

• Literature by and about Henri Queuille in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Henri Queuille in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

predecessor	Office	successor
André Marie Georges Bidault René Pleven	Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic September 11, 1948 - October 6, 1949 July 2, 1950 - July 12, 1950 March 10, 1951 - July 10, 1951	Georges Bidault René Pleven René Pleven