Jean Zay
Jean Zay ( born August 6, 1904 in Orléans, France, † June 20 1944 in the forest of Molles, Allier, France) was a French politician.
Life and work
His Jewish father was a journalist, his Protestant mother a primary school teacher. He was raised Protestant and secular. He attended elementary school and high school in Orléans.
After studying law he became a lawyer, but was also interested very much for journalism and literature. He wrote, among other things for the newspapers Progres du Loiret and La France du Centre. Early on, he was attracted by the policy, in 1925 a member of the Parti radical, and fought in their youth organization. 1932 Jean Zay was elected in the constituency Loiret in the second round of voting for deputies and was at 27 the youngest deputy of the French Chamber of Deputies. Four years later he was as a candidate of the Popular Front, to the existence of which he was actively involved, re-elected on May 3, 1936. The socialist Prime Minister Léon Blum appointed Jean Zay on June 4, 1936 Minister of National Education and Fine Arts. This ministerial post he retained under changing governments held until his resignation on 2 September 1939. He wanted to show as a soldier in solidarity with the people of his generation by the entry into the French army. He took the consent of his superiors in the extraordinary and dramatic meeting the Chamber of Deputies on 18 June 1940 in Bordeaux part. With other Members he left for North Africa to continue the war from there. On August 16, 1940 Zay was in Rabat, Morocco, arrested, tried by the Vichy government of desertion and returned to France and sentenced to life imprisonment in a political process on 4 October 1940 in Clermont -Ferrand. During his detention, in Clermont- Ferrand, then to Marseille and finally in Riom he wrote under ever more arduous conditions of detention his thoughts on the political future of France as well as events during detention down. This appeared in 1945 under the title Souvenirs et solitude ( memories and loneliness ). While the Allies had already landed in Normandy, Jean Zay was abducted on 20 June 1944 by the French Vichy militia from prison in Riom and executed on the same day in the forest of Molles at Vichy.
In February 2014, the French President François Hollande announced that Jean Zay is transferred together with Pierre Brossolette, Germaine Tillion and Geneviève de Gaulle - Anthonioz to the Panthéon in the coming year.
His work as a minister
Under the Minister of National Education and Fine Arts Jean Zay important projects of educational policies were put in place and decided to fundamental reform, because for him counted the education of the most important tasks of the Popular Front government.
- The school was extended from 13 to 14 years from October 1937
- Increasing the number of classes
- Physical education became compulsory
- Establishment of school canteens and conventional medicine
- Promotion of technology and hygiene lessons
- Increasing the number of scholarships and the financial supplement
- Increase in holiday camps
- Establishment of the Musée de l' Homme
- Opening of the Palais de la Découverte
- Project management of the university: the École Nationale d'Administration.