Monarch Leopold III Role Belgian Politician Preceded by Paul van Zeeland Party Liberal Party | Political party Liberal Party Succeeded by Paul-Henri Spaak Name Paul-Emile Janson Siblings Marie Janson | |
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Born 30 May 1872
Brussels, Belgium ( 1872-05-30 ) Alma mater Free University of Brussels Died March 3, 1944, Buchenwald concentration camp, Weimar, Germany Education Universite libre de Bruxelles, Free University of Brussels Nephews Paul-Henri Spaak, Charles Spaak, Claude Spaak | ||
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Paul-Émile Janson (30 May 1872 – 3 March 1944) was a francophone Belgian liberal politician and Prime Minister (1937–1938). During the German occupation, he was arrested as a political prisoner and died in a German concentration camp in 1944.
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Biography
Born in Brussels, Janson was the son of liberal statesman Paul Janson (died 1913). He studied law at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel), practised as a lawyer, and also taught at the university.
Political career
Janson was elected as a liberal to the Belgian Chamber of Representatives in 1910. He was not re-elected in 1912, but he was again elected in 1914. He held various minister posts including War (1920), Justice (1927-1931; 1932-1934; 1939, 1940) and minister without portfolio (1940-1944). He was made an honorary Minister of State in 1931.
He served as the 30th Prime Minister of Belgium in 1937–1938. In the early part of the Second World War, Janson served as Foreign minister, and as minister without portfolio, in the government of Hubert Pierlot. He remained in France when the government in exile moved to London. In 1943 he was detained by the occupying German forces and incarcerated in the Buchenwald concentration camp. He died there in 1944.
His sister Marie Janson was the first woman to be elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1921 and the mother of Paul-Henri Spaak, Janson's nephew and the man who directly succeeded him as Prime Minister in 1938.