Vincent Auriol

Vincent Jules Auriol (; 27 August 1884 – 1 January 1966) was President of France from 1947 to 1954. A member of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), he was the first president elected under the Fourth Republic. His presidential term was marked by the Indochina War, the implementation of the Monnet Plan for modernisation, as well as France joining the Council of Europe and NATO as a founding member.

First elected to the Chamber of Deputies from Haute-Garonne in 1914, Auriol served in government under the Third Republic as Minister of Finance (19361937) and Minister of Justice (19371938).

Early life and politics Auriol was born in Revel, Haute-Garonne, as the only child of Jacques Antoine Auriol (1855–1933), a baker nicknamed Paul, and Angélique Virginie Durand (1861–1945). His great-grandmother, Anne Auriol, was a first cousin of English engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. 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.

In 1914, Auriol entered the Chamber of Deputies as a Socialist deputy for Muret, a position he retained until 1942. He also served as Mayor of Muret from 3 May 1925 to 17 January 1947, (there were eighteen different governments during his seven years as president.)

After his presidency, Auriol assumed the role of elder statesman, and wrote articles on political topics. Auriol became a member of the Constitutional Council of France in 1958 at the establishment of the French Fifth Republic; he resigned from the SFIO in the same year. He unsuccessfully lobbied against the constitution in the 1958 national referendum, and resigned from his position on the Constitutional Council in 1960 to protest the growing power of Charles de Gaulle's presidency. In 1965, he endorsed François Mitterrand for the presidency.

On 1 January 1966, Vincent Auriol died in hospital in the 7th arrondissement of Paris and was buried at Muret, Haute-Garonne.

Personal life On 1 June 1911, Auriol married Michelle Aucouturier. Around seven to eight years later, the couple had a son, Paul (1919–1992) and the aviator Jacqueline Auriol was his daughter-in-law.