Charles de Gaulle

:For the Paris airport, see Charles de Gaulle International Airport. For the aircraft carrier, see FS Charles de Gaulle.

1890–1912: Formative years

De Gaulle was the third child of a morally conservative but socially progressive Catholic bourgeois family. His father's side of the family was a long line of aristocracy from Normandy and Burgundy which had been settled in Paris for about a century, whereas his mother's side was a family of rich entrepreneurs from the industrial region of Lille in French Flanders. Born in Lille, de Gaulle grew up and was educated in Paris.

Related Topics:
Catholic - Bourgeois - Normandy - Burgundy - French Flanders - Lille - Paris

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De Gaulle's family was intellectual. His grandfather was a historian, his grandmother a writer, and his father a professor in private Catholic schools who founded his own private school. Political debates were frequent at home, and from an early age, de Gaulle was introduced by his father to the major conservative authors. The family was very patriotic and he was raised in the cult of the Nation (De Gaulle wrote in his memoirs that "my mother felt an uncompromising passion for the fatherland, equal to her religious piety"). Although traditionalist and monarchist, the family was legalist and respected the institutions of the French Republic. Their social ideas were also more liberal, influenced by socially conscious Roman Catholicism. During the Dreyfus affair the family distanced itself from the more conservative natonalist circles and, to their credit, supported Alfred Dreyfus, who was nearly made a martyr.

Related Topics:
Conservative - Nation - Monarchist - Liberal - Roman Catholicism - Dreyfus affair - Alfred Dreyfus

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