Jacques Chaban-Delmas

Jacques Chaban-Delmas in 1969

Bronze statue of the Mayor Chaban-Delmas in Bordeaux (2012)

Jacques Chaban-Delmas (born March 7, 1915 in Paris , † November 10, 2000 there ) was a French politician .

Life

Chaban-Delmas comes from a middle-class family and studied law and politics . After completing his studies, he completed his military service and worked as a journalist for a short time . In 1941 he worked in the Ministry of Industrial Production of the Vichy regime . Two years later he was part of the exclusive cadre of financial inspectors, but at the same time acted under the code name "Chaban" as the Resistance liaison to Charles de Gaulle in London and later in Algiers . As head of the military resistance actions of the Comité français de la liberation nationaleChaban-Delmas took part in the resistance, was appointed brigadier general of the French army at the age of 29 and moved into the city in August 1944 after a week of fighting during the liberation of Paris . In the same year he was a member of the cabinet of the Minister of War.

As a Gaullist from the very beginning, he joined the Gaullist movement after the war . In 1945 he became Secretary General of the Ministry of Information. A year later, Chaban-Delmas was a member of the National Assembly as a member of the Radical Party , but shortly afterwards switched to the Gaullist collection movement RPF ( Rassemblement du peuple français ).

From 1947 to 1995 Chaban-Delmas was Mayor of Bordeaux . In 1954 he was appointed Minister for Public Works in the Pierre Mendès France government; the government was in office from June 18, 1954 to February 5, 1955. In the cabinet of the socialist Guy Mollet (February 1, 1956 to May 21, 1957) he was one of the ministers of state from February 21, 1956. In the government of Félix Gaillard (November 6, 1957 to April 15, 1958) he was Minister of Defense. With the founding of the new Gaullist party Union pour la Nouvelle République (UNR), Chaban-Delmas ran again successfully for the National Assembly (election on November 23 and 30, 1958), of which he became president against de Gaulle's will. He held this office until 1969. After the election of Georges Pompidou as President, he became French Prime Minister on June 20, 1969 and remained so until July 5, 1972. After that, Pompidou appointed the government of Pierre Messmer I.

After Pompidou's death in 1974, Chaban-Delmas ran in the first round of the early presidential elections , this time as a candidate for the Gaullist UDR : the UNR had meanwhile been renamed the "Union des démocrates pour la République". He received 15.11 percent of the vote; François Mitterrand (PS) and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing made it into the runoff election . 1978 to 1981 he managed to return to the office of President of the National Assembly, also from 1986 to 1988.

He also held other political offices at national, regional and local level, including that of President of the Regional Council of Aquitaine . From 1957 to 1960 he was the first president of the Permanent Conference of Local and Regional Authorities, the predecessor organization of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe . Chaban-Delmas was characterized as an independent head and a balancing factor in French domestic policy, while in foreign policy he decisively represented France's national interests in the European unification process.

The rugby stadium in Bordeaux has been named Stade Jacques-Chaban-Delmas since 2001 . The Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas lift bridge in Bordeaux, completed in 2013, was also named after him.

Web links

Commons : Jacques Chaban-Delmas  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• La mort de Jacques Chaban-Delmas , obituary in Le Nouvel Observateur of November 13, 2000 (French)
• Biography of Chaban-Delmas on the website of the Ordre de la Liberation , on ordredelaliberation.fr (French)
• Inauguration de l'Esplanade Jacques Chaban-Delmas à Paris VII (August 26, 2004) , naming of a street in Paris after Chaban-Delmas (French)
• Radioscopie de Jacques Chaban-Delmas Ina Archives Télé, on ina.fr (French)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Defender of local and regional democracy for 50 years , p. 2 in: Brochure of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe (PDF)

predecessor	Office	successor
André Morice	Defense Minister of France November 6, 1957-14. May 1958	Pierre de Chevigné
André Le Troquer Edgar Faure Louis Mermaz	President of the French National Assembly December 9, 1958–25. June 1969 April 3, 1978–2. July 1981 April 2, 1986-23. June 1988	Achille Peretti Louis Mermaz Laurent Fabius