28 Facts About Henri Sellier

Henri Charles Sellier was a French administrator, urban planner and Socialist politician.

Henri Sellier did much to develop garden cities in the Paris region.

Henri Charles Sellier was born on 22 December 1883 in Bourges, Cher.

Henri Sellier's father was a skilled metalworker who became a foreman in the cannon foundry of the Bourges arsenal.

Henri Sellier was a brilliant pupil, and won a state scholarship to study at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales business school, where he gained a diploma in 1901.

Henri Sellier was influenced by the socialists Edouard Vaillant and Jules-Louis Breton.

Henri Sellier joined the Blanquist Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party in 1898.

In 1907 Henri Sellier married Jessa Guitton, a seamstress and then shop worker.

Henri Sellier remained an active socialist and collaborated with Jean Jaures and Albert Thomas.

Henri Sellier voted with the majority to join the Communist Third International at the Tours Congress in November 1920, but in October 1921 was expelled from the French Communist Party and joined the Socialist French Section of the Workers' International.

Henri Sellier remained a member of the SFIO for the rest of his life.

In 1909 Henri Sellier was elected to the Puteaux municipal council in the western suburbs of Paris.

Henri Sellier was reelected to the general council in 1912 and 1919.

Henri Sellier was elected mayor of Suresnes in 1919, and held office until 1940.

In 1925 the canton of Puteaux was divided, and Henri Sellier was elected to represent the 2nd district, Suresnes and Nanterre-Sud, in the general council of the Seine.

Henri Sellier ran unsuccessfully for election to the senate in January 1927.

Henri Sellier was elected senator for the Seine in the first round in the elections of 20 October 1935 on the Popular Front list.

Henri Sellier was Minister of Health in the first cabinet of Leon Blum from 4 June 1936 to 21 June 1937.

Henri Sellier was appointed managing director of the Office des Habitations a Bon Marche of the Seine department when it was created in 1915, and dedicated himself to urban issues and public housing.

Henri Sellier moved to Suresnes that year, and would do much to improve the municipal facilities.

Henri Sellier helped found the Union internationale des villes, of which he was vice president from 1920.

Henri Sellier became a role model for Social-Democratic city leaders in the inter-war period.

Henri Sellier aimed for a system in which efficient teams of specialists would regulate urban agglomerations to maximize the welfare and individual potential of the inhabitants.

Henri Sellier saw the old administrative structure of Paris and its surrounding communes as an outdated obstacle to the healthy evolution of the overall urban area, in which unregulated capitalist expansion would inevitably cause social evils.

Henri Sellier organized health protection from infancy, created institutions for education at all ages, built many public facilities and was innovative in providing housing that was comfortable and hygienic.

Henri Sellier was removed from office on 22 June 1941 by the Vichy authorities, arrested by the Gestapo and detained in the camp at Compiegne for almost a month.

Henri Sellier refused to work with collaborationist socialists and founded a socialist action committee, which became part of the French Resistance.

Henri Sellier died at the age of 59 on 24 November 1943 in Suresnes, Seine.