Quick Facts
Biography
Pierre-Henri Teitgen (29 May 1908 – 6 April 1997) was a French lawyer, professor and politician. Teitgen was born in Rennes, Brittany. Made prisoner of war in 1940, he played a major role in the French Resistance.
Member of French Parliament from 1945 to 1958 for Ille-et-Vilaine, he was president of the Popular Republican Movement (Christian Democratic Party) from 1952 to 1956. He was Minister of Information in 1944 (one of the founders of the daily Le Monde), Minister of Justice in 1945–1946 (in charge of the purges of the Vichy regime followers and collaborators with Nazi Germany), Minister of Defence in 1947–1948 in Robert Schuman's government at the time of the insurrectional strikes. In May 1948 he attended the Congress of The Hague and worked closely with Robert Schuman in Schuman Declaration and the start of the European Community when he was Minister of Information and Civil service in 1949–1950. He was later Minister of Overseas in 1950. He was member of the Constitutional Committee in 1958. He was twice deputy prime minister in 1947–1948 and 1953–1954. He was member of the Consultative Constitutional Committee in 1958 but became a critic of De Gaulle's policies. He supported the Socialist Defferre in his attempt as candidate for presidency in 1965. In September 1976, he was appointed member of the European Court of Human Rights. He had helped to create the court some 27 years earlier, in 1949, outlining its powers and the rights it should protect in a report for the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe. Teitgen died in Paris in 1997.
Teitgen's father, Henri Teitgen (1882 - 1965), was a senior politician of the centre-right MRP (party).