Jean Jaurès | |
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Member of Parliament for Tarn department |
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In office 8 January 1895 – 1 June 1898 |
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Preceded by | Jérôme Ludovic de Solages |
Succeeded by | Jérôme Ludovic de Solages |
Personal details | |
Born |
Castres, Second French Empire |
3 September 1859
Died | 31 July 1914 Paris, French Third Republic |
(aged 54)
Resting place | Panthéon |
Nationality | French |
Political party | French Socialist Party |
Spouse(s) | Louise Bois |
Children | Madeleine Jaurès, Louis Paul Jaurès |
Alma mater | École Normale Supérieure |
Occupation | Director of L'Humanité |
Profession | Professor, Journalist |
Jean Jaurès (French: [ʒɑ̃ ʒɔ.ʁɛːs]; full name Auguste Marie Joseph Jean Léon Jaurès; 3 September 1859 – 31 July 1914) was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. The two parties merged in 1905 in the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). An antimilitarist, Jaurès was assassinated at the outbreak of World War I, and remains one of the main historical figures of the French Left.
The son of an unsuccessful businessman and farmer, Jean Jaurès was born in Castres (Tarn), into a modest French provincial haute-bourgeois family. He was the first cousin once removed of the admiral and senator Benjamin Jaurès, who was named Minister of the Navy and Colonies in 1889, and of the admiral Charles Jaurès. His younger brother, Louis, also became an admiral and a Republican-Socialist deputy.
A brilliant student, Jaurès was educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris and admitted first at the École normale supérieure, in philosophy, in 1878, ahead of Henri Bergson. He obtained his agrégation of philosophy in 1881, ending up third, and then taught philosophy for two years at the Albi lycee, before lecturing at the University of Toulouse. He was elected Republican deputy for the département of Tarn in 1885, sitting alongside the moderate Opportunist Republicans, opposed both to Georges Clemenceau's Radicals and to the Socialists. He then supported both Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta.