#mitterand

L’orologiaio di Brest  è un romanzo molto particolare. La sua struttura peculiare si disvela già dalle prime pagine. Quando decidi di cimentarti nella composizione di un puzzle, rovesci sul tavolo tutti i pezzi in ordine sparso: alcuni mostrano la superficie giusta, altri il rovescio e tutti  sembrano dirti:≪ bel  rompicapo, vero? Ce la farai a metterci tutti insieme e a formare un bel quadro…

Danielle Mitterand's bedroom at the Élysée Palace (1983)

François Mitterrand (President of French Republic in 1981 and 1988) and Marguerite Duras (Prix Goncourt 1984 for her famous book: L’Amant).  During World War II, Duras was a member of the Communist Party and of the French Resistance, alongside François Mitterrand (who later became President of France). Her husband was deported to Buchenwald, the notorious concentration camp—an experience she…

MITTERAND E THATCHER: LOVE STORY?

Margaret Thatcher e Francois Mitterand: due leader che hanno lasciato il segno nella storia. Ma lasciarono anche il segno uno nel cuore dell’altra? C’è chi ne è convintissimo. Francia e Inghilterra hanno vissuto due storie parallele, spesso alleate obtorto collo, raramente (o diciamo pure mai) amiche, sono due grandi matrici della storia europea. Francois Mitterand e Margaret Thatcher: fu love…

French retirement used to be at 65 during the “30 glorious years”, the time of reconstruction which followed World War Two [1]. Then Mitterand became president and lowered retirement to 60. This was a trick to weaken the French People. It worked. Mitterand was a fake socialist and true demagogue: as an authentic fascist, having launched his career wih fascism, Mitterand received the francisque…

Pour le bonheur perdu, Je te demande pardon, mon Anne Pour l’amour que je t’ai mesuré, Pour la paix que je t’ai refusée, Pour les heures que je ne t’ai pas données Pour l’espérance délaissée Je te demande pardon, mon Anne.

- François Mitterrand to is long term lover, Anne Pingeot

It was the secret political love affair of the century. But now France’s enduring curiosity about François Mitterrand’s 30-year relationship with his mistress, the art historian Anne Pingeot.

Pingeot lived in the shadows and kept silent for more than 50 years. In 2016, almost 20 years after his death, she authorised the publication of more than 1,200 love letters the former Socialist president sent her from 1962 right up until his death in 1996.

The letters shed light on the strange double life of Mitterrand, who remained married to his wife, Danielle, with whom he had three children, for more than 50 years. When president, between 1981 and 1995, he would leave the Elysée palace to spend his nights at a grace and favour flat across Paris where Pingeot lived with their hidden daughter, Mazarine.

Political correspondents knew about the relationship, but it was kept secret and only came to light in 1994 when Paris Match published photos of Mitterrand with Mazarine.

The relationship was no less intriguing for its age gap. When Mitterrand met Pingeot he was 46 and she was 19. Mitterrand was a socialist senator and former minister 46 years of age when he met Anne Pingeot - 27 years his junior - on the beach at Hossegor in south-west France.

She was the daughter of a prominent Catholic family from Clermont-Ferrand (related to the Michelin tyre magnates), and it was her father who initially befriended Mitterrand.

The first recorded letter is from October 1962, when he promises to send Anne a copy of a book on Socrates. Two years later, it is clear that the two have become lovers, as the formal vous gives way to the intimate tu.

The letters remove any doubt that Anne was the most important woman in Mitterrand's life.

Since 1944 he had been married to Danielle Gouze, and they had two sons, Jean-Christophe and Gilbert. Throughout his political career Danielle - with her own assertive political views - was his official companion.  

But behind the scenes he was nurturing, and nurtured by, his love for Anne, who went on to become a specialist in 19th Century sculpture and a curator at the Orsay Museum in Paris.

In 1963, at the beginning of their relationship he wrote to her: “I love being with you” adding that he had “only a moderate like” for the exchanges with the “always unknown public” who had to be convinced “with speeches and ideas” - which he felt was “an absurd task, when one knows that only love, actions and example are a conquering force.”

In 1965, he wrote that he had decided to run for president, adding: “Do you know that I’m thinking of you and that it’s marvellously useful that there is an Anne-François love?”

In 1980, he wrote that he would love her until death, but nodded toward the difficulties of her hidden status. “It’s too hard to be alone for so many important things.”

In 1995, months before his death, he wrote that she was “the best luck of my life”.

Danielle Mitterrand invited her husband’s mistress Anne Pingeot and their 21-year-old daughter Mazarine to the private ceremony n his southwestern hometown of Jarnac.

Mrs. Mitterrand, Ms. Pingeot and Mazarine stood side by side before the late president’s coffin.

Dressed in a black winter coat and a pale pink scarf and looking deeply pained but dignified, Mrs. Mitterrand was also accompanied by sons Gilbert and Jean-Christophe and her grandchildren. Mazarine stood beside the Mitterrand family, while her mother stood slightly behind them, her head covered by a thin black veil.

When a magazine published photos of Mazarine in 1995, they were breaking a long held French taboo against prying in politicians’ private lives, it was only revealing a widely-known secret: that the then-president had a daughter born to a mistress while he was married.

The magazine justified breaking the taboo by saying that Mazarine had become a quasi-public figure in those recent months before Mitterand’s death, having been seen taken on official trips and also seen frequently in public with her father.

The French press of both left and right harshly condemned the magazine for the report at the time, calling it a sign of creeping ``Anglo-Saxon puritanism.″

But Mitterrand himself, with characteristic sang-froid, dismissed the hullabaloo in two words: ``Et alors?″ _ so what?

Mitterrand’s former culture minister and long-time friend Jack Lang had at the time told French radio that the late president would have been pleased to see the three women side by side, ``In a way it is just another Mitterrand miracle. If he was able to see this scene, he must have felt great happiness. It is a tribute to the quality of soul of those concerned.”

Anne had always resisted any interviews or the publication of her private letters out of respect to Danielle Mitterand. It was only after her death did she finally relent for the sake of posterity.