This chapter will offer a biographical sketch of Camille Gutt's pre-1940 career. It will not, however, follow a strictly biographical approach but will instead address his career in the context of the changing nature between finance and politics in interwar Belgium. More precisely, it will be argued that the interwar period reflects not only the growing fluidity between business and politics, but also the first tensions and divisions over financial policy, especially in terms of domestic economic policy.

The following chapter will be divided into three main sections. The first section will offer a brief survey of Gutt's early life and career. The second will posit his multifaceted role within the context of the rising of big business in politics in interwar Belgium. The third section will address the experiences of Gutt as Belgian finance minister in 1934–5 and in 1939–40.

Camille Gutt's Early Life and Career, 1884–1919

Very little is known about Gutt's family origins. Gutt was born in Brussels on 14 November 1884. His father Max Guttenstein came from Neuzedlish, a city included in the district of Tachau (now Tachov in the Czech Republic) on the remote edges of Bohemia, then part of the Austrian–Hungarian Empire. His mother, Marie-Pauline Schweizer was from Alsace. In the early 1920s, Camille Guttenstein decided to change his name to Gutt.