Léon Bérard

Léon Bérard (6 January 1876, Sauveterre-de-Béarn – 24 February 1960 in Saint-Étienne) was a French politician and lawyer.

Bérard was Minister of Public Instruction in 1919 and from 1921 to 1924, and Minister of Justice from 1931 to 1932 and was elected to the Académie française in 1934. Bérard was the Ambassador from Vichy France to the Holy See from 1940 to 1945.

Bérard was strongly opposed to Esperanto, which he considered an instrument of Internationalism and a potential rival of French as a diplomatic language. As Minister of Public Instruction he banned the teaching or the promotion of esperanto in public schools, and had a prominent role in the rejection by the League of Nations of a resolution in favor of the adoption of esperanto as an auxiliary international language.

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