César CAMPINCHI

César Campinchi was a student activist, then a French lawyer and statesman (4 May 1882 in Calcatoggio, South Corsica - 22 February 1941 in Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône). He went to Paris to study law. He was admitted to the Paris Bar in 1907, became secretary of the Conférence du stage in 1910, a lecturer and writer of legal columns, and then a member of the Conseil de l'Ordre des avocats at the end of the 1920s. Although he was discharged, he took part in the First World War. Wounded at Notre-Dame de Lorette, he took part in the Battle of Verdun. A member of the radical-socialist party, he was elected deputy for Corsica twice, from 1932 to 1940. In the spring of 1937, he presented a bill concerning the rights and protection of minors. Apart from between January and March 1938, when he was Keeper of the Seals, he was Minister of the Navy from 1937 to 1940. Called to this position by Camille Chautemps and Léon Blum, he was in favour of arming and accelerating naval construction. He obtained the construction of ships of the line, cruisers, submarines and, above all, 2 aircraft carriers and the fitting out of the military bases at Aspretto and Mers el Kebir. In January 1939, he launched the battleship Richelieu in Brest. On 16 June 1940, he was one of the few MPs who, with Georges Mandel, embarked on the Massilia to continue the fight against Germany. He was stripped of his mandate and died shortly afterwards in Marseille following a medical operation. He married Adolphe Landry's daughter, Hélène, herself a lawyer. She was appointed by François de Menthon to preside over the commission that led to the drafting of the ordinance of February 2, 1945 on delinquent children, thus fulfilling her husband's proposal.