1. An officer in the cavalry during the First World War, Taittinger received several citations and was decorated as a Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honour.
11 Facts About Pierre Taittinger
1. 2.
Pierre Taittinger died in Paris in 1965 and was buried in Reims at the cimetiere du Nord with his third son Francois who had run the Taittinger champagne house between 1945 and 1960.
3.
Pierre Taittinger had held off for five hours a Panzer division of General von Kleist with his fellow soldiers, many of whom were of Moroccan, Algerian and West African units.
4.
Pierre Taittinger was mayor of Saint-Georges-des-Coteaux, in the same departement, from 1919 until 1937, and again from 1953 until his death in 1965.
5.
In 1924, Pierre Taittinger founded the Jeunesses patriotes, a fascist group, recruited mostly from university students and financed by industrialists.
6.
Pierre Taittinger took inspiration for the group's creation in the Boulangist Ligue des patriotes.
7.
Pierre Taittinger was deeply influenced by the Bonapartist movement, during which he was a member of the French Parliament.
8.
On 10 July 1940, Pierre Taittinger voted as a member of the Chamber of Deputies in favour of granting the cabinet presided by Marshal Philippe Petain authority to draw up a new constitution, thereby effectively ending the French Third Republic and establishing Vichy France.
9.
Pierre Taittinger became president of the municipal council of Paris in May 1943, as the Germans occupied the city, and held this position until the Liberation of Paris in August 1944.
10.
Pierre Taittinger restored the House of the Counts of Champagne in the center of Reims, damaged by the Germans during the First World War, which had been the residence of the Counts of Champagne during the Middle Ages, now the property of Champagne Taittinger.
11.
Pierre Taittinger bequeathed his estate of La Grainetiere, on the Isle of Rhe, to the city of Reims, which has become a summer camp for the children of Reims.