Tixier-Vignancour, Jean-Louis, 1907-1989

Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ lwi tiksje viɲɑ̃kuʁ]; 12 October 1907 – 29 September 1989) was a French lawyer and far-right politician. Elected to the National Assembly in 1936, he initially collaborated with the Vichy regime before leaving for Tunisia in 1941. After a military court declared Tixier-Vignancour ineligible to hold public office for ten years for his early WWII activities, he joined the nationalist group Jeune Nation but left in 1954, opposed to their use of violence. He was re-elected to the Assembly in 1956, but lost his seat during the first legislative elections of the Fifth Republic. Tixier-Vignancour was a candidate during the 1965 French presidential election, with Jean-Marie Le Pen as a campaign director, and received 5.2% of the votes, the biggest result for a far-right candidate since the war. He had also served as a lawyer for Louis-Ferdinand Céline in 1948, and for Raoul Salan during the 1962 OAS trials. In his later life, he became known as the main instigator in the theft of Philippe Pétain's coffin in 1973, and as a spokesman for the far-right Party of New Forces in the late 1970s. Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour died on 17 September 1989 at 81.