Pierre Pflimlin

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Pierre Pflimlin, 1975

Pierre Eugène Jean Pflimlin ([ pjɛʁ flimˈlɛ̃ ]; * February 5, 1907 in Roubaix , Département Nord , † June 27, 2000 in Strasbourg ) was a French lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic MRP and later the Center démocrate and the CDS . He held various ministerial offices and briefly became Prime Minister in May 1958 (the last of the Fourth Republic ). From 1959 to 1983 Pflimlin was Mayor of Strasbourg and from 1984 to 1987 President of the European Parliament .

Live and act

Beginnings

Pierre Pflimlin's father was a textile manufacturer who ran a spinning mill in Mulhouse . Pflimlin grew up in the Alsatian city, which was part of Germany in his early youth . Both German and French were spoken in the family. He studied law at the Institut Catholique de Paris and at the University of Strasbourg , where he finally received his doctorate with a legal dissertation. He established himself as a lawyer in Strasbourg in 1933 . The conservative lawyer did not accept divorce cases out of religious conviction, but instead advocated ideas of social reform. During the Second World War he worked as an interpreter , then in the youth ministry of the Vichy regime under Pétain , but he soon withdrew from politics and eventually became a judge.

Political career

After the liberation , Pflimlin devoted himself entirely to politics, he became a member of the Republican People's Party ( Mouvement républicain populaire , MRP), a party founded in 1944 at the time of the Provisional Government with a program consisting of Christian and social democratic components. This combination proved so successful that it gave the MRP the third largest voter turnout in the post-war period. Its most famous protagonist was the European politician Robert Schuman .

In 1945 Pflimlin became a city councilor in Strasbourg and a member of the National Assembly for 22 years . Despite the short life of the French cabinet in the Fourth Republic, he was able to expand his political ambitions more and more. First he was Undersecretary of State for Population Policy, then Minister of Agriculture from 1947 to 1949 and 1950 to 1951, where he supplemented the European Schuman Plan with his Pflimlin Plan in the agricultural field. In short succession he served in various cabinets as Minister for Foreign Trade (1951–52), Minister of State for Affairs of the Council of Europe (early 1952), Minister for Overseas Territories (1952–53). After his first attempt to become head of government himself failed, he held the post of finance and economics minister in the Faure II cabinet from March 1955 to February 1956 .

As the successor to Pierre-Henri Teitgen , Pflimlim was elected party chairman of the MRP in 1956. His government activity was suspended for a year and a half, in November 1957 he was again Minister of Finance, this time under the radical socialist Félix Gaillard . After the Gaillard government overthrew because of the escalating Algerian conflict, Pflimlin was appointed Prime Minister on May 13, 1958. But since the military leadership wanted General de Gaulle as head of government rather than him, the generals' first Algerian coup took place on the same day . On May 28th, Pflimlin resigned because his compromises could not satisfy either side. Cooperation with the communists was out of the question for him. This also meant the end of the Fourth Republic, as de Gaulle sealed his return to power with a constitutional amendment.

De Gaulle's new government , the first cabinet of the Fifth Republic , belonged to Pflimlin again as Ministre d'État (one of the four highest-ranking ministers). However, due to the differences to de Gaulle's European policy, he left the government after his election as President in January 1959. Instead, he ran successfully for the mayor elections in Strasbourg in 1959 . He held this office until 1983. He passed the chairmanship of the MRP to Senator André Colin in May 1959 . For the last time he took over a cabinet post in April 1962 in the first government of Georges Pompidou - as Minister for Development Cooperation with the rank of Ministre d'État. However, the MRP ministers left the government as early as the next month, as their European policy had been snubbed by de Gaulle at a press conference.

At the end of 1962, a new civic parliamentary alliance, the Center démocratique , was formed in the National Assembly , which he chaired (until 1963). From 1965 to 1970 Pflimlim was chairman of the Regional Economic Development Commission (CODER) of Alsace . After the dissolution of the MRP in 1967, he and most of the party officials moved to the Center démocrate (CD) led by Jean Lecanuet , which was merged into the Center des démocrates sociaux (CDS) in 1976 .

European politics

Pflimlin dedicated his policy to Franco-German reconciliation and European unification. It is thanks in large part to his commitment that Strasbourg has become a center of European politics. From 1959 to 1967 he was a member and from 1963 to 1966 President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe .

Pierre Pflimlin (center) with Kurt Georg Kiesinger and Kai-Uwe von Hassel in the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House in Rhöndorf, 1983

In 1979 he was elected member, in 1982 one of the vice-presidents and on July 24th 1984 he was elected President of the European Parliament. He held the office until January 1987, after which he remained a simple member of parliament until 1989 and continued to work for European unification. Pflimlin now shifted more to publishing. In his memoirs (1991) he once again emphasized the importance of European unification efforts. His colleagues and friends valued Pflimlin for his diplomacy, his subtle humor and his work discipline.

He was one of the last surviving founding fathers of the European Union . Pflimlin was married to Marie Odile, born in 1939. Heinrich, and left behind three children: Étienne, bank president of Crédit Mutuel , Odile, German language professor in Paris, and Antoinette, employee of the city of Strasbourg.

Awards

Works

  • with Laufenburg Henry (1938): La nouvelle structure économique du IIIe Reich. Paris: Hartmann, 105 p.
  • (1977): Le cheminement de l'idée européenne. [conférence] Friborg: Éditions universitaires, 28 p.
  • (1991): Mémoires d'un européen de la IVe à la Ve République. Paris: Fayard, 391 p.,
  • (1995): “Peace - that can be attributed to the European idea.” A history lesson with Pierre Pflimlin. Editor: Hanns-Georg Helwerth. State Image Office Württemberg, Stuttgart. 1 video cassette (VHS, 53 min.), Color and b / w

literature

  • Archbishop's General Vicariate Paderborn (1987): Twelve Peoples - One Future. Documentation on the award of the St. Liborius Medal for Unity and Peace to Pierre Pflimlin on October 26, 1986. Ed. By the Archbishop. Vicariate General Paderborn, Press and Information Office. Paderborn: Bonifatius, 51 p., Ill. Color.
  • Monmarché, Carole et Pflimlin, Edouard: Pierre Pflimlin. Les choix d'une vie. Strasbourg: Éditions du Signe 2001, 165 p. ISBN 2-7468-0310-0

Web links

Commons : Pierre Pflimlin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ AAS 50 (1958), n.15, p. 755.
predecessor Office successor
Félix Gaillard Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic
May 13, 1958 - May 28, 1958 		Charles de Gaulle
Robert Buron
Félix Gaillard 		Minister of Finance of France
February 23, 1955 - February 1, 1956
November 6, 1957 - May 14, 1958 		Robert Lacoste
Edgar Faure
personal data
SURNAME Pflimlin, Pierre
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pflimlin, Pierre Eugène Jean (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French lawyer and politician (MRP), member of the National Assembly, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Roubaix , French Flanders
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 2000
Place of death Strasbourg