Raymond Mondon

Raymond Joseph Mondon (born March 8, 1914 in Ancy-sur-Moselle , Moselle department (then Ancy an der Mosel , district of Metz ); † December 31, 1970 in Metz , Moselle department) was a French politician who lived between 1946 and 1969 Member of the National Assembly and Mayor of Metz from 1947 until his death in 1970 . In 1955 he briefly held the position of State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior and he was later Minister of Transport from 1969 until his death.

Life

Studies and World War II

Mondon, who came from a winemaking family, began studying law at the University of Nancy after completing his education at the College Saint-Clément de Metz , which he graduated in 1939. With the beginning of the Second World War he was called up for military service and he suffered a wound during the occupation of France by the German Wehrmacht in 1940. He then became involved in the Resistance movement and was arrested for the first time by the German occupation forces in June 1944 for his activities. He escaped and was arrested again some time later, from which he was again able to escape. For his services to the resistance movement he was awarded the Croix de guerre , the Médaille de la Résistance and the Knight's Cross of the Legion of Honor .

After the final liberation of Metz on December 13, 1944 , Mondon returned there and was appointed Head of Cabinet of the Prefect of the Moselle Department. In 1945 he was elected a member of the Metz City Council.

Fourth republic

Elected member of the National Assembly in 1946

In November 1946, he ran in this department for a mandate in the Legislative National Assembly on the list of the Union démocratique et socialiste de la Résistance (UDSR), a Gaullist association led by MP Alfred Krieger . The list ran against lists of the Parti communiste français (PCF), the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO), the Mouvement républicain populaire (MRP), a right-wing list led by former MPs Alex Wiltzer and Arthur Heid and a list of the Union Lorraine . Under the direction of Robert Schuman , the MRP won four of the seats to be allocated in the department. In second place came the UDSR with 60,064 of the 247,890 votes cast and received the last two of the six mandates to be awarded with its candidates Krieger and Mondon, while the PCF received no seat in third place.

In December 1946 Mondon became a member of the Pension Committee (Commission des pensions) and a member of the Committee on Justice and Legislation (Commission de la justice et de la législation) , of which he was secretary. At the same time he was in March 1947 titular judge at the Supreme Court of Justice (Haute Cour de justice) , two thirds of which consisted of MPs and one third of other people. In addition, he was a representative of the pension committee in a consultative commission for questions of late returnees. He also became a vice member of the Administrative Reform Committee (Commission de la réforme administrative) in August 1947 .

First election as mayor of Metz in 1947

In October 1947, Mondon was elected mayor of Metz for the first time for the Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF) founded by Charles de Gaulle on April 14, 1947 , and held that office for more than 23 years until his death on December 31, 1970. In In this role, he initially dealt in particular with housing construction in order to accommodate thousands of people who had fled Lorraine .

In January 1948 he moved as secretary to the Interior Committee (Commission de l'intérieur) , whose secretary he became in January 1950. A year later, in January 1951, he became a member of the Committee on Reconstruction and War Damage (Commission de la reconstruction et des dommages de guerre) .

Re-election as MP in 1951

In the elections of June 17, 1951, Mondon was the top candidate of the RPF list in the Moselle department. This time Alfred Krieger took second place on the list, while third place on the list was taken by another MP, Jules Thiriet , who had been elected a member of the National Assembly on Schuman's MRP list in November 1946. Mondon's RPF list ran against the list of PCF, SFIO, Rassemblement des gauches républicaines (RGR) and MRP, with SFIO, RGR and MRP forming an electoral alliance. This electoral alliance received fewer votes than Mondon's RPF list, which received 46 percent of the vote, while the electoral alliance led by the MRP received only 32 percent of the vote. Nonetheless, both lists received three MPs each.

After his return to the National Assembly, Mondon was a member of three committees in the summer of 1951, namely for home affairs, for reconstruction and war damage and for foreign affairs (Commission des affaires étrangères) . On March 6, 1952, he was one of the MPs of the RPF who, contrary to party discipline, rejected the election of Antoine Pinay as Prime Minister . In June 1952 he resigned from the RPF and was one of the co-founders of Action républicaine et sociale (ARS). In the following years he was in opposition to the governments of Prime Ministers Pinay, René Mayer and Joseph Laniel .

In January 1953 he became secretary of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which in June 1953 appointed him a member of the coordinating committee for questions relating to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). A month later, in July 1953, he became a member of the Commission of Inquiry into the so-called Piaster Affair , a political currency scandal over the exchange rate of the piastres in French Indochina to the French franc during the Indochina War . On August 28, 1951, he was also Vice President of the Haute Cour de justice .

State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior in 1955 and re-elected in 1956

On January 20, 1955, Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France made Mondon State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior with responsibility for affairs of the departments and municipalities (Secrétaire d'Etat à l'intérieur, chargé des affaires départementales et communales) and thus an important employee of the former Interior Minister François Mitterrand . He also held this government office in the following government of Prime Minister Christian Pineau , which lasted only six days until February 23, 1955.

In the elections to the National Assembly in the Moselle department on January 2, 1956, candidates ran on nine lists. In addition to the list of the major parties, candidates ran on two Poujadist lists and one independent socialist list. Mondon was the top candidate on the list of the Center national des indépendants et paysans (CNIP), while his runner-up Alfred Krieger remained loyal to Gaullism and was the top candidate on the list of Républicains sociaux . During the election campaign, Mondon propagated the reform of the constitution of 1946 and called for, among other things, the dissolution of the National Assembly after two government crises within one year, the election in the arrondissement , the defense of the Union française and the continuation of European integration through the inclusion of Great Britain . In addition, during the election campaign he dealt with local issues such as the settlement of war damage and border disputes as well as the status of schools. For the elections, three lists were finally entered into, namely a Poujadist alliance, an alliance of the Front républicain , which consisted of socialists, radicals and neo-Gaullists, and a center-right electoral alliance, which consisted of the MRP and CNIP. This last electoral alliance achieved an absolute majority as well as all mandates to be awarded in the department. With 22.7 percent of the votes cast, the CNIP was able to provide three MPs: Mondon, Jules Thiriet and Hippolyte Ramel .

Subsequently, Mondon became a member of both the Committee on Parliamentary Immunity (Commission des immunités parlementaires) and again the Foreign Affairs Committee in January 1956 , of which he became secretary in February 1956 and its vice-president in October 1957. In addition, he was confirmed in the spring of 1956 as Vice-President of the Haute Cour de justice responsible for constitutional matters .

In the autumn of 1958, Mondon voted in favor of the constitutional reforms proposed by Charles de Gaulle, which led to the ratification of the Constitution of the Fifth French Republic on October 4, 1958 and the associated establishment of the Fifth French Republic on October 5, 1958.

Fifth Republic

The Metz guild house is located on Place Raymond Mondon, named after him, in Metz

In the first elections of the Fifth French Republic, Mondon was re-elected as a candidate for the Indépendants et paysans d'action sociale (IPAS) in the first constituency of the Moselle department. During his tenure as mayor, the Moselle canalization between 1958 and 1964 made it possible to reach the Rhine via a waterway from Metz . In 1961, Metz merged with the neighboring municipalities of Borny , Magny and Vallières-lès-Metz , so that the population of Metz rose to 102,771 in 1962.

In the subsequent elections on November 18, 1962, March 12, 1967 and June 23, 1968, Mondon was a candidate for the Comité d'études et de liaison des Républicains indépendants, founded in 1962 by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing , and the Fédération nationale that emerged in 1966 des républicains et indépendants (FNRI) elected member of the National Assembly in the first constituency of the Moselle department.

On June 20, 1969, Mondon was appointed Minister of Transport (Ministre des transports) by Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas in his cabinet and held this ministerial office until his death on December 31, 1970.

His successor as Minister of Transport was then Jean Chamant on January 7, 1970 , from whom he had previously taken over this office, while his successor as Mayor of Metz was Jean-Marie Rausch .

Place Raymond-Mondon was named in his honor in Metz , where the guild house (Hôtel des Arts et Métiers) is one of the historic buildings of Metz .

Web links

• Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly
• French Ministeries (rulers.org)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (1st legislative period)
2. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (2nd legislative period)
3. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (3rd legislative period)
4. ↑ Entry on the homepage of the National Assembly (4th legislative period)
5. ↑ Chaban-Delmas cabinet
6. ↑ Eric Roussel: Georges Pompidou , 2004