Jack Lang

Jack Mathieu Émile Lang (born 2 September 1939) is a French politician. A member of the Socialist Party, he served as Minister of Culture from 1981 to 1986 and again from 1988 to 1993, as well as Minister of National Education from 1992 to 1993 and 2000 to 2002. He was also Mayor of Blois from 1989 until his resignation in 2000. Lang is best known for originating the Fête de la Musique in 1982 as Culture Minister, an all day public music festival which occurs yearly on 21 June in France and throughout the world.

Since 2013 he has been president of the Arab World Institute in Paris. Jack Lang was born to Roger Lang and Marie-Luce Bouchet in Mirecourt, in the département of Vosges. His father's family were a secular, assimilated, well-to-do Jewish family based in Nancy. Roger Lang was the commercial manager of the family business which was founded by Jack's grandfather Albert.

Roger and Albert were both freemasons. Jack's mother, Marie-Luce Bouchet, a Catholic, was born in 1919 as the daughter of Emile Bouchet, who died in 1926, and Berthe Boulanger, a nurse who was also a freemason. In 1938, Albert and Roger sent their wives to Vichy because of the threat of war with Germany. After the German invasion, Albert Lang and his wife moved to Brive-la-Gaillarde in Corrèze.