Edmond Michelet

Edmond Charles Octave Michelet was a French politician, born October 8, 1899 in Paris 19th, and died October 9, 1970 in Brive-la-Gaillarde (Corrèze).

On June 17, 1940, he distributed leaflets in mailboxes in Brive denouncing the spirit of surrender and thus calling for the Resistance through a work by Charles Péguy, L'Argent, suite. He takes up a leaflet with a text by Péguy: "He who does not surrender is right against those who surrender".

People come into contact with Edmond Michelet, ensuring the distribution of the underground press, in particular Combat and the communist newspapers Germain Auboiroux, Robert Delord, Henry and his brother Édouard Valéry.

Leader of the Resistance Combat movement in Limousin (region R5) under the name of Duval, he was arrested on February 25, 1943 in Brive-la-Gaillarde by the Gestapo. Transferred to Fresnes where he was held in solitary confinement, he was deported in September 1943 to Dachau.

Elected deputy for Corrèze under the MRP label in 1945, Edmond Michelet became Minister of the Armies under General de Gaulle on November 21, 1945, a position he held until December 16, 1946. Reelected deputy in 1946 (Second National Constituent Assembly and National Assembly), he sat at the Palais-Bourbon but was defeated in 1951.

He was a senator for the Seine between 1952 and 1959 (vice-president of the Council of the Republic in 1958).

In 1963, at the request of General de Gaulle, he founded the France-Algeria Association. Edmond Michelet became Minister of State, in charge of the Civil Service, from April 6, 1967 to May 31, 1968 (Georges Pompidou IV government), then succeeded André Malraux as Minister of Cultural Affairs, from June 20, 1969 to his death (Jacques government Chaban-Delmas).

A fine connoisseur of Charles Péguy, he befriended the De Gaulle family, or the painter Marc Chagall. André Malraux said of him that he was “the chaplain of France”.

The solemn funeral for Edmond Michelet takes place in the Collegiate Church of Saint-Martin in Brive-la-Gaillarde, a mass will be concelebrated by eight priests, former deportees from the Dachau concentration camp. A speech by the Prime Minister, Jacques Chaban-Delmas. the burial took place, in accordance with the wishes of the deceased, in the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix then in his deportee's habit from Dachau. Edmond Michelet had it built in 1959, a hundred meters from his house in Marcillac.http://centremichelet.brive.fr/

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Category:1899 births
Category:1970 deaths
Category:Politicians from Paris
Category:Righteous Among the Nations