
Paul Doumer (22 March 1857 – 7 May 1932) was President of France from 13 June 1931 to 7 May 1932, succeeding Gaston Doumergue and preceding Albert Francois Lebrun. A member of the Radical Party of France, Doumer was assassinated in 1932 by mentally unstable Russian emigre Paul Gorguloff.
Biography[]
Paul Doumer was born in Aurillac, France in 1857, and he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1888 as a member of the Radical Party of France. Doumer later became Secretary of Finance in 1895, and he served as Governor-General of French Indochina from 1896 to 1902, where he modernized the colonial administration. He became a nationalist symbol after he lost three sons in World War I, and he would go on to serve as Secretary of Finance from 1921 to 1922 and from 1925 to 1926. In 1931, he defeated Aristide Briand to become President of France, but his term was cut short when, on 7 May 1932, he was murdered by a Russian emigre, Paul Gorguloff, who killed him at the opening of a book fair at a hotel in Paris.