1. Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was re-elected to the Assembly in 1956, but lost his seat during the first legislative elections of the Fifth Republic.
31 Facts About Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour
1. 2.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour had served as a lawyer for Louis-Ferdinand Celine in 1948, and for Raoul Salan during the 1962 OAS trials.
3.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour Tixier was born on 12 October 1907 in Paris, the son of Leon Tixier, a doctor, and Andree Vignancour.
4.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour earned a degree in law in 1926 and the following year qualified as a barrister at the Paris Court of Appeal.
5.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was an activist in the youth wing of the royalist movement Action Francaise, the Camelots du Roi.
6.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour took part in the anti-parliamentary riots of 6 February 1934.
7.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour entered politics and defeated the independent leftist Georges Moutet in the French legislative election of the department of Basses-Pyrenees in May 1936.
8.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour's election was however declared non-valid after suspicions of fraud.
9.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was part of a parliamentary group which traveled to Spain to congratulate Francisco Franco on his fight against the Spanish Popular Front.
10.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour married Janine Auriol in January 1938, the daughter of a lawyer and member of parliament for Haute-Garonne.
11.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour served as the under-Secretary of State for Information under Nazi-collaborationist Vichy France and as director of Petain's "Propaganda Committee".
12.
In early November 1942, the Allies invaded the German-occupied Maghreb during Operation Torch, and Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was interned by the German authorities for his links to the resistance.
13.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was released following the ejection of the Axis powers from North Africa by the Allies in May 1943.
14.
In 1948, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour became the lawyer of French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Celine, accused of "collaboration with the enemy" for his antisemitic and pro-occupation writings.
15.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour obtained Celine's amnesty on 26 April 1951, after he presented his client under his real name, Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, with no judge able to draw a relationship between Destouches and his pen name, Celine.
16.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was granted amnesty in 1953 and became able to run for public office.
17.
Re-elected in the department of Basses-Pyrenees, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour served as a Non-Inscrit in the National Assembly between January 1956 and December 1958, where he allied himself with the Poujadists.
18.
On 30 November 1958, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour lost his siege to a Radical candidate in the first legislative elections of the new regime.
19.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour's defense credited for "saving Salan's neck", this event boosted his standing among nationalists.
20.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour served as a defense counsel for colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry, executed for attempting to assassinate Charles de Gaulle during the Petit-Clamart attack of August 1962.
21.
In November 1963, Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour publicly announced his candidacy for the 1965 presidential election, presenting himself as the "militant of all the nationalist parties whichever they may be".
22.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour managed to rally diverse leanings that existed within the far-right, all united against Gaullism: the young revolutionaries of Occident and Europe-Action were present, along with "those nostalgic for Vichy, descendants of Action Francaise, fundamentalist Catholics, Algerie francaise ultras, the residue of Poujadism, embryonic fascists, and representatives of the liberal right".
23.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour abandoned his radical far-right rhetoric to court the moderate right, his campaign managers labeling him the "national and liberal opposition" against the extremist Charles de Gaulle.
24.
Votes for Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour were heavily concentrated in the south of France, a region which had already seen the highest levels of "no" votes in the Evian Agreements referendum and where many Pieds-noirs had settled after their recent repatriation from Algeria in 1962.
25.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour participated in a pro-Israel demonstration in 1967 in Paris during the Six-Day War.
26.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was the main instigator in the theft of Philippe Petain's coffin of February 1973.
27.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour joined the far-right Party of New Forces in June 1978, of which he became the honorary president and spokesman.
28.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour died on 17 September 1989 at 81 in Paris.
29.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was fervently opposed to immigration, labeling himself a supporter of "French Algeria" rather than "Algerian France".
30.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour argued for "strict and rigorously selected quotas" for Algerian immigrants to "avoid the invasion of France by a multitude of starving mouths, undesirables and invalids with no technical or social education".
31.
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was the godfather of Jean-Marie Le Pen's daughter Caroline.