François Mitterrand

François Mitterrand was born in Jarnac on October 26, 1916. He was finishing his studies in Paris when he was called by the French army in September 1939. He was 3 times mentioned, then injured and imprisoned but he escaped in December 1941 during his transfer to another war camp. Back to France, he joined the Résistance where he had an important role. After the war, in November 1946, he was elected deputy in the Nièvre and had several ministerial responsibilities during the 10 first years of the Fourth Republic. He was Minister of the French Overseas Departments, which allowed him to show his will of decolonization, to calm different tensions in the colonies and to create personal and lasting relationships with African leaders; then he retired from this post in 1953 before becoming Secretary of State for the Home Department in 1954-1955 and Minister of Justice in 1956. In 1958, he criticized the Fifth Republic and the way Charles de Gaulle became president and lost his deputy seat, which he got again in 1962 after a short time at the Senate. Then he became mayor of Château-Chinon in 1959 and president of the General Council of the Nièvre in 1964. When the constitution was modified in 1962, it said that French people would directly elect the President of the Republic; thus Mitterrand was the only left-side candidate in 1965 and was qualified for the second round where he had 45% against Charles de Gaulle. The next presidential elections (in 1969) were a disaster for the left-side parties (with Georges Pompidou's victory) but after the reform of the Socialist Party in Epinay in 1971, Mitterrand became definitely the candidate of the "Left Union" and after having failed again (but shortly) in 1974 against Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, he was elected in 1981 then again in 1988. His 14-years-long presidency mainly allowed him to take a lot of social measures that were expected by the workers, but also to abolish the death penalty, to modernize the penal code, to extend and enforce the freedom of speech, etc... He was also careful of the involvement of France in big international problems (especially in the name of peace), and comfimed the place of France within the European Union. He also allowed several "Big Projects" to be developed as the Pyramid of the Louvre, the Arche de la Défense and the National Library (which later took his name), and he also became one of the best political writer of the 20th century. Then he died from cancer, less than one year after having finished his second presidency, at the age of 79.