François Mitterrand

François Mitterrand (1916 to 1996) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest tenure of any republican head of state in French history and the first time the Fifth Republic had a left-wing president. Born in Jarnac in Charente to a devoutly Catholic and conservative family, he began on the nationalist right, worked under the Vichy regime in its early years, then joined the Resistance and moved to the left. He held ministerial posts repeatedly under the Fourth Republic and opposed de Gaulle's founding of the Fifth, before becoming the left's standard bearer in the presidential elections of 1965 and 1974 and winning in 1981. His first term opened with nationalisations and a shorter working week, then turned to austerity and market liberalisation, and it also brought the abolition of the death penalty and the end of the state broadcasting monopoly. He lived through two periods of cohabitation with conservative cabinets and worked with Helmut Kohl to advance European integration through the Maastricht Treaty. He died in January 1996 from prostate cancer he had concealed for most of his presidency.