Pierre Sudreau

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Pierre Sudreau

Pierre Sudreau (born May 13, 1919 in Paris ; † January 22, 2012 ibid) was a French politician of the Union pour la démocratie française (UDF), who was Minister of Construction from 1958 to 1962 and Minister of National Education between April and October 1962 . He was later a member of the National Assembly from 1967 to 1981 , where he represented the Loir-et-Cher department .

In his childhood, Sudreau exchanged letters with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry . His imprisonment in Buchenwald concentration camp shaped Sudreau's later political life and, according to his statements, made him a staunch European.

Life

Childhood, World War II and Resistance fighters

Sudreau's correspondence with the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was considered the inspiration for his novel The Little Prince

Sudreau came from a well-to-do family, but with the death of his father in 1923 he was half-orphaned at the age of four. He was then sent by his mother to the Lycée Hoche boarding school in Versailles , where he read the 1930 novel Nachtflug (Vol de Nuit) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry at the age of twelve . He then began an exchange of letters with the author. This correspondence later inspired the author to write the book The Little Prince and Sudreau himself was considered a model for the title character.

After attending school, he began training as a pilot at the Ecole de l'Air . He also studied law and literature at the private university École libre des sciences politiques , founded by Émile Boutmy in 1872, from which he graduated with a law degree. After the start of the western campaign to conquer France by the German Wehrmacht , he was initially able to flee to England, where he continued his pilot training.

During the Second World War he was involved in the Réseau Alliance , a group of the Resistance movement , and belonged to the Brutus network together with André Boyer and Gaston Defferre . For his actions there, after his arrest, he was first brought to the prison of the Secret State Police in Fresnes (Val-de-Marne) before he was deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp . As head of the Brutus network , he was sentenced to death. He was saved from the execution of the sentence because the identity of a deceased prisoner could be obtained for him in the camp. He was also involved in the organized resistance in Buchenwald concentration camp and was involved in the liberation of the camp by armed prisoners and units of the 3rd US Army on April 11, 1945. His imprisonment in Buchenwald concentration camp shaped his later political life and, according to his statements, made him a staunch European.

Post-war period and promotion to ministerial position

After his liberation he was promoted by General Charles de Gaulle and entered the Ministry of the Interior in 1945 as a civil servant, where he was first sub-prefect and then vice-director. From August 28, 1951 to June 16, 1955, he was prefect of the Loir-et-Cher department, making him the youngest prefect in France. He then served from 1955 to 1956 employees in the cabinet of Prime Minister Edgar Faure , before Commissioner for Building and Regional Planning of the Region Ile-de-France was.

On June 9, 1958, Sudreau was appointed by Prime Minister de Gaulle as Minister of Construction (Ministre de la Construction) in his third government . He then held the office of Minister of Construction from January 9, 1959 to April 16, 1962 in the cabinet of Prime Minister Michel Debre . In this capacity, he accompanied President de Gaulle in 1960 during the inauguration of the national memorial for the martyrs of the deportation to the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp .

After the end of the war, he recommended that President Charles de Gaulle contact Konrad Adenauer because he assumed that this German had also been in a concentration camp . When Sudreau noticed his error, the first step towards Franco-German reconciliation had long been taken.

He then took over the post of Minister for National Education (Ministre de l'éducation nationale) in the first government of Prime Minister Georges Pompidou on April 16, 1962 and held this post until his resignation on October 15, 1962. His successor was then Louis Joxe . The reason for his resignation was his dissatisfaction with the change in the constitution of the Fifth Republic , which in future provided for a direct election of the President of the Republic instead of the previous election by an electoral body consisting of the members of the National Assembly and the Senate .

Member of the National Assembly and Mayor of Blois

Elections in 1967 and 1968

After leaving the government, Sudreau succeeded René Mayer as President of the European Movement France (Mouvement Européen-France) in 1962 and held this position until he was replaced by Gaston Defferre in 1968. In addition, from 1962 he was chairman of the Federation of Railway Material Industries FIF (Fédération des industries ferroviaires) . In this role, he succeeded in 1970 with the sale of 10,000 railway wagons to the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the most extensive contract in French-East German trade relations. As chairman of the FIF he also became a “father” of the high-speed train TGV .

In the elections to the National Assembly on March 12, 1967, Sudreau was elected for the first time as a member of the National Assembly for Progrès et démocratie modern (PDM) in the first constituency of the Loir-et-Cher department. After moving into the Palais Bourbon , on April 6, 1967, he became a member of the Committee on Finance, General Economics and Planning (Commission des finances, de l'économie générale et du plan) . In the elections of June 30, 1968, which were brought forward because of the unrest in May 1968 , he was re-elected for the PDM in his constituency. First he was again a member of the Committee on Finance, General Economics and Planning and switched to the Foreign Affairs Committee (Commission des affaires étrangères) on April 2, 1970 , before becoming a member of the Committee on Finance, General Economics again on April 2, 1971 and planning was made.

In 1971, Sudreau was also elected mayor of Blois for the first time .

1973 and 1978 elections

In the elections of March 4, 1973, he was confirmed for the Réformateurs démocrates sociaux in his constituency as a member of the National Assembly. There he was again a member of the Finance, General Economy and Planning Committee on April 5, 1973, to which he was a member until the end of the fifth legislative period on April 2, 1978. At the same time he became a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on December 18, 1973 for the modernization of the legislation on direct local taxes. In 1975 he was commissioned by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to draft a report on corporate reform , which later paved the way for the extensive changes to labor law by Jean Auroux , Labor Minister in Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy's cabinet .

In 1976, Sudreau succeeded Raymond Boisdé as President of the Regional Council of the Center Region and held this office until he was replaced by Jean Delaneau in 1979. He was also re-elected Mayor of Blois in 1977.

In the elections of March 12, 1978, he was re-elected as a member of the National Assembly and again represented the first constituency of the Loir department for the Union pour la démocratie française (UDF) until the end of the sixth legislative period on May 22, 1981 -et-cher. During this sixth legislative period he continued to be a member of the Committee on Finance, General Economics and Planning from April 6, 1978 to April 3, 1979, before becoming a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee again on April 3, 1979 and from October 12, 1979 to May 22, 1981 acted as Vice President of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Deselected Mayor of Blois in 1989 and the last years of his life

As mayor of Blois, the initiation of a cross-border partner relationship with the city ​​of Weimar , which lies in the GDR , was also initiated in 1981 , when he and the Weimar Lord Mayor Franz Kirchner signed a declaration of friendship, which became the basis for the commencement of a city ​​partnership on February 18, 1995 .

After Sudreau was re-elected mayor of Blois in 1983, he suffered an election defeat by Jack Lang in 1989 and lost his mayor's office after 18 years. In the last years of his life he was active as President of the Association of Veterans of the Resistance Movement ANACR (Association nationale des anciens combattants de la Résistance) and from 2006 to 2009 as President of the Fondation de la Résistance .

Sudreau, who was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor for his services , died of complications from heart failure in the Hôpital des Invalides in Paris.

Publications

  • L'enchaînement , 1967
  • La réforme de l'entreprise , 1975
  • La stratégie de l'absurde , 1980
  • De l'inertie politique , foreword by René Rémond, 1985
  • Au-delà de toutes les frontières , 1991, new edition 2002
  • Sans se départir de soi: quelques vérités sans concession , co-author François Georges, 2004
  • Elles et Eux et la déportation , co-authors Caroline Langlois and Michel Reynaud, 2005

Background literature

  • Peter Lang: French Urban Planning, 1940-1968: The Construction and Deconstruction of an Authoritarian System , 2009, ISBN 1-43310-400-8 .

Web links

Commons : Pierre Sudreau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rebecca J. Pulju: Women and Mass Consumer Society in Postwar France , 2011, ISBN 1-10737-780-3 , p. 204
  2. ^ Debré cabinet
  3. ^ Nicole C. Rudolph: Debré cabinet
  4. ↑ At Home in Postwar France: Modern Mass Housing and the Right to Comfort , 2015, ISBN 1-78238-588-6 , p. 151 u. a.
  5. ^ KH Adler, Carrie Hamilton (editor): Homes and Homecomings: Gendered Histories of Domesticity and Return , 2011, ISBN 1-44435-198-2
  6. ↑ Interview with Pierre SUDREAU on the homepage of the Natzweiler Memorial
  7. ↑ Pompidou I cabinet
  8. ↑ Christian Wenkel: In search of a "different Germany": The relationship between France and the GDR in the field of tension between perception and diplomacy , 2014, ISBN 3-48698-961-8
  9. ↑ Uwe Fraunholz, Anke Woschech (editor): Technology Fiction: Technical Visions and Utopias in the Ultra Modern , 2014, ISBN 3-83942-072-5 , p. 142
  10. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (3rd legislative period)
  11. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (4th legislative period)
  12. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (5th legislative period)
  13. ↑ Chris Howell: Regulating Labor: The State and Industrial Relations Reform in Postwar France , 2011, ISBN 1-40082-079-0 , p. 120
  14. ↑ Christian Thuderoz: Histoire et sociologie du management: doctrines, textes, études de cas , 2006, ISBN 2-88074-699-X , p. 129 u. a.
  15. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (6th legislative period)
  16. ^ Ten years of twinning between Weimar and Blois. Bonjour Blois - Bienvenue Weimar ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Page access on September 14, 2015) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / stadt.weimar.de
  17. ↑ Wilfred L. Kohl: French Nuclear Diplomacy , 2015, ISBN 1-40086-988-9 , p. 177
  18. ↑ Au-delà de toutes les frontières (online version in Google Books )
personal data
SURNAME Sudreau, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French politician (UDF), member of the National Assembly
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 2012
Place of death Paris