Robert Schuman

Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Robert Schuman (; 29 June 18864 September 1963) was a Luxembourg-born French statesman. Schuman was a Christian Democrat ( Popular Republican Movement) political thinker and activist. Twice Prime Minister of France, a reformist Minister of Finance and a Foreign Minister, he was instrumental in building postwar European and trans-Atlantic institutions and was one of the founders of the European Union, the Council of Europe and NATO. The 1964–1965 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour.
In 2021, Schuman was declared venerable by Pope Francis in recognition of his acting on Christian principles.

Early life

Schuman was born in June 1886 in Clausen, Luxembourg, having his father's German citizenship. His father, Jean-Pierre Schuman (d. 1900), who was a native of Lorraine and was born a French citizen had become a German citizen when Lorraine was annexed by Germany in 1871, and he left to settle in Luxembourg, not far from his native village of Evrange.

His mother, Eugénie Suzanne Duren (d. 1911), was a Luxembourger and even though Robert Schuman would later become involved in French politics, he grew up and attended school in Luxembourg City, speaking Luxembourgish as his mother tongue.

Schuman's secondary schooling from 1896 to 1903 was at Athénée de Luxembourg, followed in 1904 by the Lycée impérial in Metz. From 1904 to 1910, he studied law, economics, political philosophy, theology and statistics at the Universities of Berlin, Munich, Bonn and Strasbourg, and received a law degree with the highest distinction from Strasbourg University.

In 1912, Schuman set up practice as a lawyer in Metz. When the war broke out in 1914, he was called up for the auxiliary troops by the German army in Metz but was excused from military service on health grounds. From 1915 to 1918, he served in the administration of the Boulay district.

Interwar period

After the First World War, Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France, and Schuman became a French citizen in 1919.

Schuman became active in French politics. In 1919, he was first elected as a member of the Chamber of Deputies on a regional list and later served as the deputy for Thionville ( Moselle) until 1958, with an interval during the war. He made a major contribution to the drafting and the parliamentary passage of the reintroduction of the French Civil and Commercial Codes by the French parliament, when the Alsace-Lorraine region, then under German rule and thus German law, returned to France. The harmonisation of the regional law with the French law was called "Lex Schuman". Schuman also investigated and patiently uncovered postwar corruption in the Lorraine steel industries and in the Alsace and the Lorraine railways, which were bought for a derisory price by the powerful and influential de Wendel family in what he called in the Parliament "a pillage".

World War II

In 1940, because of his expertise on Germany, Schuman was called to become a member of Paul Reynaud's wartime government to be in charge of the refugees. He kept that position during the first Pétain government. On 10 July, he voted to give full power to Marshal Philippe Pétain, who supported the armistice with Germany, but refused to continue to be in the government. On 14 September, he was arrested for acts of resistance and protest against Nazi methods. He was interrogated by the Gestapo but the intervention of a German lawyer stopped him from being sent to Dachau concentration camp.

French minister

After the war, Schuman rose to great prominence. He initially had difficulties because of his 1940 vote for Petain and for being one of his ministers. In September 1944, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, the commander of the French First Army, sought him out to become a political advisor in the affairs of Alsace-Lorraine, the minister of war, , demanded shortly later that "this product of Vichy be immediately kicked out". Schuman had been a former minister of Pétain and a parliamentarian who had voted to grant him full powers and so, under the ordinance of 26 August 1944, he was considered ineligible for public office, stricken with ''indignité nationale''. On 24 July 1945, Schuman wrote to Charles de Gaulle to ask him to intervene. De Gaulle answered favourably, and on 15 September, Schuman regained his full civic rights, becoming able to again play an active role in French politics.

Schuman was Minister of Finance in 1946 and Prime Minister from 1947 to 1948. He assured parliamentary stability during a period of revolutionary strikes and attempted insurrection. In the last days of his first administration, his government proposed plans that later resulted in the Council of Europe and the European Community single market. Becoming Foreign Minister in 1948, he retained the post in different governments until early 1953. When Schuman's first government had proposed the creation of a European Assembly, it made the issue a governmental matter for Europe, not merely an academic discussion or the subject of private conferences, like The Hague Congress of the European Movements earlier in 1948. (Schuman's was one of the few governments to send active ministers.) The proposal saw life as the Council of Europe and was created within the tight schedule that Schuman had set. At the signing of its Statutes at St James's Palace, London, on 5 May 1949, the founding states agreed to defining the borders of Europe based on the principles of human rights and fundamental freedoms that Schuman enunciated there. He also announced a coming supranational union for Europe that saw light as the European Coal and Steel Community and other such Communities within a union framework of common law and democracy:

As Foreign Minister, he announced in September 1948 and the next year, before the United Nations General Assembly, France's aim to create a democratic organisation for Europe, which a post-Nazi and democratic Germany could join. In 1949 and 1950, he made a series of speeches in Europe and North America about creating a supranational European Community. This supranational structure, he said, would create lasting peace between Member States.

On 9 May 1950, the principles of supranational democracy were announced in what has become known as the Schuman Declaration. The text was jointly prepared by Paul Reuter

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