Paul-Émile Janson

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Paul-Émile Janson
Jos De Swerts (1923)

Paul-Émile Janson (born May 30, 1872 in Brussels , † March 3, 1944 in Buchenwald concentration camp ) was a Belgian liberal politician and Prime Minister.

Family, studies and work

The son of the liberal politician Paul Janson studied law at the Free University of Brussels and then worked as a lawyer. As a student, he advocated universal suffrage in 1891 . Later he was temporarily professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He was also a member of the Masonic Lodge Les vrais Amis de l'Union et de l'Honneur in Brussels.

His sister Marie Janson became Belgium's first female Senator in 1921 and was the mother of the future Prime Minister and NATO Secretary General Paul-Henri Spaak .

Political career

MP, Minister and Senator

He began his political career in 1910 when he was elected a member of the Chamber of Deputies . There he represented the Liberal Party for the Arrondissement Doornik until 1935 . After the German troops marched into Belgium during World War I , Janson took on a leading role in protecting refugees. In 1917 he was also an employee of the head of the US food supply and later US President Herbert C. Hoover .

In 1920 he became Minister of Defense. He then took on increasingly important posts in politics and was a delegate to the League of Nations from 1926 to 1929 . He later served as Justice Minister in the cabinets of Henri Jaspar (1927-1931) and Charles de Broqueville (1932-1934). He was a senator from 1935 to 1936 .

In 1931 he was awarded the royal honorary title of Minister of State.

Prime Minister 1937 to 1938

From November 24, 1937 to May 15, 1938 he was the successor of Paul van Zeeland Prime Minister until his replacement by his nephew Paul-Henri Spaak. With his cabinet of Liberal, Catholic and Socialist politicians, Janson was the first liberal prime minister since 1884 and the last liberal prime minister until Guy Verhofstadt took office in 1999. During the short term in office there were increasing conflicts between the ruling parties: while the Catholic ministers demanded that he cut spending at the expense of social reforms, the socialists insisted on higher spending and new taxation.

Second World War and death in Buchenwald concentration camp

In 1939 he was Foreign Minister and from 1939 to 1940 again Minister of Justice in Hubert Pierlot's cabinet . From 1940 he was a minister with no portfolio in the Pierlot cabinet. After the German Wehrmacht invaded Belgium in 1940, he initially managed to escape to France with the government . When the government finally went into exile in London on October 25, 1940 , Janson stayed in France with a few other ministers. However, there he was arrested by German troops in 1943 and, after imprisonment in Fresnes, deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp , where he died.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurerlexikon. 5th edition. Herbig, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-7766-2478-6 , p. 432
personal data
SURNAME Janson, Paul-Émile
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian politician and prime minister
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Brussels
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1944
Place of death Buchenwald concentration camp