POINCARÉ, RAYMOND. — French politician, born on 20 August 1860 in Bar-le-Duc (Meuse), died on 15 October 1934 in Paris. At the age of 27, in 1887, he was elected deputy for the first time. Re-elected in 1889, he was Minister of Public Education (in 1893 and 1895), head of the Finance portfolio (1894–95), and Vice-President of the Chamber from 1895 to 1898. He entered the Senate in 1903, became President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1912 during the Balkan crisis, and in 1913 became President of the Republic.
Desiring to strengthen the Franco-Russian alliance, particularly vital in the event of war with the Central Empires, he went to Russia in July 1914 to visit the Tsar. At the outbreak of the war, he appealed to the Union sacrée of all the French people and remained at the head of the State until 1920, the end of his seven-year term. Once again President of the Council from 1922 to 1924 and from 1926 to 1929, when he resigned for reasons of health, he contributed to improving relations with the Holy See. A forthright representative of doctrinaire secularism—as Y. De La Brière defines it—P., without descending into sectarianism, respected the religious faith of others, regarding it as an individual liberty, but recognized no rights for it in the sphere of public affairs, where the sovereignty of the State was unquestioned. He was therefore, in the fullest sense of the word, a “legist” and fully shared the separation of Church and State enacted in France in 1905. He published his memoirs concerning the period 1912–18 (Au service de la France, Paris 1926–33).