Léon Blum

Léon Blum ( born April 9, 1872 in Paris, † March 30, 1950 in Jouy -en- Josas near Versailles ) was a French jurist, author and socialist politician. Between 1936 and 1950 he was several times Prime Minister of France. At times he was a prisoner in a German concentration camp.

Life

Stations

Blum was born into a Jewish family from the bourgeoisie in Paris. He attended the prestigious Lycée Henri IV, where he met the writers André Gide and published his first poems at the age of 17 in a magazine, they published together. From 1890 he studied at the elite École Normale Supérieure High School (ENS ).

Blum was in the 1930s and 1940s during three short phases Prime Minister of France. His name is associated with the Popular Front before the Second World War. He had operated as a young lawyer early on in the political world and worked on the newspaper L' Humanité since 1904. In 1905, he managed to unite the various currents of the French Socialist Party to the Section Française de l' International ouvrière, SFIO ( French Section of the Workers' International ). Programmatically, he sought above all to the containment of radical communist demands. Later he helped some social and economic reforms to break through.

It was in June 1936 (after elections on 26 April and 3 May) the first Socialist Prime Minister of France. For the first time (three) women were in government. The communists tolerated the government, without belonging to it. Vincent Auriol was Minister of Finance; Charles Spinasse economy minister. The government wanted - to stimulate the economy through consumption - in the Keynesian sense.

Blum's second term - 13 March to 8 April 1938 - lasted less than a month. He resigned after the Senate had denied him full financial freedom.

As a leading figure of the French Resistance, he was deported by Pierre Laval in 1943 after the process of Riom ( February 19, 1942 to 21 May 1943) to Germany and interned from May 1943 to April 1945 in the falcon of the Buchenwald concentration camp as a prominent "honor prisoner ". His brother René Blum was murdered in Auschwitz. On April 24, 1945 Blum was transported along with about 140 prominent inmates of the Dachau concentration camp in Lower Village (South Tyrol ), where the prisoners by soldiers of the Wehrmacht were freed under the command of Captain Wichard von Alvensleben after the SS guards had abandoned. ( See here)

After his return to France Blum was political director of the Populaire. In 1946 he was elected for the third time as Prime Minister. Blum's third cabinet was a Provisional Government of the postwar period, of 16 December 1946 to January 22, 1947, the politically led away by De Gaulle. Then took over Vincent Auriol ( Socialist Party ) as the first President of the Fourth Republic the government.

On March 30, 1950, he died at the age of 77 years. It is located in the municipal cemetery of Jouy -en- Josas buried.

Family

Among his descendants the endocrinologist Étienne -Émile Baulieu include ( b. 1926 ), and the politician Vincent Peillon (* 1960).

Writings

• Evocation of the shade. The Dreyfus Affair. Translated from the French with an introduction and notes by Joachim Kalka. Berenberg, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-937834-07-9.
• Lettres de Buchenwald. Edited by Ilan Greilsammer. Gallimard, Paris, 2003.
• Selection from the work: selected and introduced and translated from the French by Grete Helfgott. Europe, Frankfurt 1970.
• Your path to socialism. Preceded by Herbert Wehner, transmitted by Jean Hunchback into German. The people, Munich 1947.
• View on humanity. Transfer into German by Willy cousin. Rowohlt, Hamburg and Europe, Vienna 1947.
• Lev Trotsky Davidovič, František Xaver Šalda: For right and truth: materials for Moscow trial. Prague 1936
• Without disarmament there is no peace. The French social democracy in the struggle for the organization of peace. Translation Pink Hilferding, Introduction Rudolf Hilferding. Dietz, Berlin, 1932.
• With Raphael Abramovitch, Friedrich Adler, Emile Vandervelde: The Moscow Trial and the Socialist Workers ' International '. ozialistische Workers Internationale.Dietz, Berlin, 1931.
• The French budget and the reparations. Chamber speech, Mulhouse 1923.

Honors

The Kibbutz Kfar Blum in the northern Galilee, named after Léon Blum.