Fifty years ago, on 2 April 1974, President Georges Pompidou died. He was 62 and had been suffering from cancer.
Pompidou was president for almost five years - two years short of the seven-year presidential term at the time. Elections were organised following his death and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing became president in May.
Pompidou left his mark on France in a number of ways. Here are three of them.
Ending the May 1968 crisis
In March 1968, a student protest in Nanterre outside Paris set off a chain of events resulting in a wave of strikes, riots and violence. By May of the same year, events had become so inflammatory that many believed the country to be on the verge of a civil war.
At that time, Georges Pompidou was prime minister. President de Gaulle’s grip on power was weakening and he even secretly left the country for Germany at one point, effectively leaving Pompidou in charge. It was Pompidou who led negotiations with the unions to end the strikes. At the end of May, Pompidou persuaded de Gaulle to dissolve parliament which led to fresh elections and defused the protests. After de Gaulle finally resigned the following year, Pompidou was well placed to stand as president and won.
Championing the arts
Pompidou was a lover of the arts. He studied literature at the elite École Normale Supérieure and taught the subject for five years. The project to build a new arts and cultural venue in Paris was initiated by Pompidou himself in 1970. He wanted a modern cultural centre similar to those he had seen in the USA.
A total of 681 proposals were submitted as part of an open competition. The winning entry came from Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, two young architects working together in London at the time. The design caused shock and outrage when it was unveiled due to the exposed pipes, glass and metal. For many, the modern design jarred with the building’s more traditional surroundings. Pompidou himself died before the building opened in 1977 but his wife, Claude, continued to champion the project. It was eventually named the Centre Pompidou in his honour, although many Parisians still refer to it as simply Beaubourg.
Modernising Paris
Many other aspects of the Paris cityscape changed during Pompidou’s time as president, some good and some bad, depending on your point of view. These included the construction of the Montparnasse tower and the opening of the car expressway along the right bank of the river Seine.
One significant change took place just a few hundred metres from the Centre Pompidou. The area known as Les Halles was once the central food market of Paris, housed in a beautiful iron and glass structure built in the 1850s. Victor Hugo brought the bustle, smells and intrigue of the area to life in his novel Le ventre de Paris (The belly of Paris) published in 1873.
By the 1960s, the congestion and hygiene problems were so bad that city authorities decided to move the market outside the city centre. The same thing was happening in London around that time with the shift of the fruit and vegetable market out of Covent Garden. Unlike London, which preserved and redeveloped the original buildings of the market, the much grander structures of Les Halles were torn down.
While Pompidou didn’t order the destruction, he didn’t stop it either. Those buildings were replaced with a landscaped park and soulless shopping centre that quickly became a magnet for drug dealers and anti-social behaviour.
So how is Pompidou viewed 50 years after his death? According to a poll conducted in 2021, Georges Pompidou was near the bottom of the list of the most-liked presidents since the war. He tied with his successor, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and the current president, Emmanuel Macron. Only François Hollande fared worse. Top of the list was Charles de Gaulle followed by Jacques Chirac.
One minor impact of Pompidou’s death was on that year’s Eurovision Song Contest. The grand final was held on 6 April in Brighton, just four days after he died. As a mark of respect, France decided to withdraw. That meant the French entrant, Dani, was unable to perform her song La vie à vingt-cinq ans. Not so good for Dani but at least it spared France the embarrassment of appearing in a contest with a winning song titled ‘Waterloo’.