Vincent Auriol was a French politician who served as the first president of the Fourth Republic from 1947 to 1954.
Education
He earned a law degree at the Collège de Revel in 1904 and began his career as a lawyer in Toulouse. A committed socialist, Auriol co-founded the newspaper Le Midi Socialiste in 1908; he was head of the Association of Journalists in Toulouse at this time.
Career
Auriol has been regarded as an authority on economics and finance. He participated in the London Conference on German reparations in 1924, and was a member of the Caillaux delegation which discussed the settlement of the French war debt to the United States in 1925. He was one of the 80 representatives who voted against allowing Henri PétainPetain full power after the defeat of France in 1940. He was imprisoned at Pellevoisin, but was later released for reasons of health and interned for the duration of the war. On Oct. 17, 1943, he managed to leave France and go to London, where he offered his services to General Charles De Gaulle, leader of the Free French movement. When it convened in Paris in November 1944, Auriol was elected to head the foreign affairs committee of the constituent assembly in October 1945. He became a minister without portfolio in the Free French cabinet of General De Gaulle in November 1945.
Following the restoration of the elected French government at the end of World War II, Auriol became chairman of the first and second constituent assemblies and was elected speaker of both. He served as a delegate from France to the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council in 1946. Auriol became president of the national assembly in December 1946 after the first elections under the new constitution in France. He was elected president of the French Republic, Jan. 16, 1947, for a seven-year term. In 1951 Auriol paid the first formal visit to the United States and Canada ever made by a president of the French Republic. He was succeeded in the presidency by RenéRene Coty on Jan. 16, 1954. In 1959 he resigned from the Socialist Party, after a membership of more than 50 years, in opposition to its leader, Guy Mollet.
Connections
On 1 June 1912, Auriol married Michelle Aucoutuier (5 March 1896 – 21 January 1979). Six years later the couple had a son, Paul (1918–1992).