Paul-Émile Janson


Paul-Émile Janson was a francophone Belgian liberal politician and Prime Minister. During the German occupation, he was arrested as a political prisoner and died in a German concentration camp in 1944.

Biography

Born in Brussels, Janson was the son of liberal statesman Paul Janson. He studied law at the Free University of Brussels, 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, Justice and minister without portfolio. 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.

Honours