Gaston Thorn (born 1928) was prime minister of Luxembourg and president (1981-1985) of the former Commission of the European Communities. His commitment to European unity proved valuable at a time when the community was plagued by increased nationalism and severe economic problems.

Gaston Thorn was born in Luxembourg on September 3, 1928. He was brought up in France where his father, Edouard Thorn, was a railway engineer, but the family returned to the Grand Duchy at the outbreak of World War II. His father, a committed Liberal, was arrested for resisting Hitler's "Germanization" of Luxembourg. In 1943 the 15-year-old Thorn also spent some months in a Nazi "correction camp" for having organized a student protest at his school against compulsory antiaircraft drills and the enforced recruitment of Luxembourg citizens into the German army.

At the end of the war he studied law at the universities of Montpellier, Lausanne, and Paris and was...