Pierre Taittinger

Pierre-Charles Taittinger (4 October 1887 – 22 January 1965) was the founder of the Taittinger champagne house and chairman of the municipal council of Paris in 1943–1944 during the German occupation of France, in which position he played a role during the Liberation of Paris.

Born in Paris, Pierre Taittinger's family were originally from Lorraine and had left the Moselle département when it had been annexed by the German Empire in 1871 in order to remain French citizens. An officer in the cavalry during the First World War, Taittinger received several citations and was decorated with the Légion d'honneur. In 1919 he was elected deputy of the Charente-Inférieure département.

Taittinger married Gabrielle Guillet (1893–1924) in 1917. In 1925, he married Anne-Marie Mailly (1887–1986). He died in Paris in 1965 and was buried in Reims at the cimetière du Nord with his third son François (1921–1960) who had run the Taittinger champagne house between 1945 and 1960.

His son Michel, a French military hero and second lieutenant in the 66th African Artillery Regiment of the French Army, died on 15 June 1940 at the age of 20 in the city of Saint Parres-aux-Tertres, near Troyes in the Champagne region. He had held off for five hours a Panzer division of General von Kleist with his fellow soldiers, many of whom were of Moroccan, Algerian and West African units. Michel had been a student in the French military academy Ecole Polytechnique.

Another of Taittinger's sons, Jean Taittinger, was deputy mayor of Reims from 1959 to 1977, Secretary of State for Budget from 1971 to 1973 and State Minister of Justice from 1973 to 1974 in the administration of Georges Pompidou.

He was mayor of Saint-Georges-des-Coteaux, in the same département, from 1919 until 1937, and again from 1953 until his death in 1965. In 1924 he was elected deputy of the 1st arrondissement of Paris, and held this mandate until 1940.

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