Danielle and François Mitterrand, Its a story which lasted 52 years. Five decades marked by the politician’s two mandates as President of the Republic from 1981 to 1995, but also by the birth of their three children, Pascal (born in 1945 and died at almost three months), Jean-Christophe ( born in 1946) and Gilbert (born in 1949), as well as by the Socialist’s adulterous relationship with Anne Pingeot and the birth of their hidden daughter Mazarine. But before all this, there was their meeting, in the middle of the Second World War. While this Wednesday, November 22 marks the 12th anniversary of the death of the former First Lady, who pushed his last breath at age 87 in 2011, Gala.fr looks back on the beginnings of her relationship and her marriage with the former leader.
Year 1944. France is in the middle of the greatest armed conflict that humanity has known, at war against Nazi Germany, and the Japanese and Italian empires. Danielle Gouze, her maiden name, is only 17 years old and already has a lot of courage, sinceshe joins the Resistance as a volunteer nurse and liaison agent in the Cluny maquis, as indicated the Obs. His sister Christine (future producer and wife of Roger Hanin), ten years his senior, was also a member of the resistance, ensuring the transfer of mail for the National Movement of Prisoners of War and Deportees. It is thanks to the latter that she meets of her future husband.
“I have a fiancé for you”: Danielle’s sister, the couple’s matchmaker
“François Mitterrand is resistant when he meets a certain Christine Gouze”, reports Europe 1 last January. “In Christine’s apartment, with other resistance fighters, he spots in a photo frame the face of a young girl who is none other than Danielle“, continue our colleagues. Charmed by Danielle Gouze’s face, he jokingly exclaims: “She’s pretty. I’ll marry her!” A joke that Christine takes seriously. She calls her younger sister a little later and reveals to her that she caught the eye of a resistance fighter. “You know, I have a fiancé for you”, she announces, to Danielle’s surprise. But that’s without taking into account the teenager’s slightly rebellious character… “At first, she said no. It must be said that Mitterrand was hidden behind an enormous mustache, and that he looked, she said‘of an Argentinian tango dancer’“remembers journalist Michèle Cotta, speaking to the media.
Resistance figure sought by the Germans, François Mitterrand, who adopted the code name François Morland, was the subject of a merciless hunt by the Gestapo. He must flee Paris and hide in Burgundy, where the Gouze sisters grew up. “It is up to Danielle Gouze to play his official fiancée”, tells Europe 1. The bachelor then plays the transfixed lover during their train journey, to put to rest the suspicions of the Gestapo. And finally takes himself in his own role, truly falling in love with her traveling companion… Feelings shared by François Mitterrand, who quickly asked the young woman for an engagement.
This surprising twist on the wedding day of Danielle and François Mitterrand
Few weeks later, their wedding was celebrated on October 28, 1944, under the vaults of the Saint-Séverin church in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. Danielle Mitterrand understands from the day of her wedding that politics will be her great rival in her husband’s heart. “The bride and groom’s cake has not yet been cut when François gets impatient and whispers in my ear: “I have to leave, I am expected by the leaders of the Prisoners’ Movement, gathered at the Elysée-Matignon”“she remembers in her book In complete freedomreleased in 1996 and covered by Release. Surprised but determined, she decides to follow him. He lets himself be convinced. So here’s the bride in her white dress, attending a political meeting in a white dress on her wedding day. “It is in a wedding dress at the back of a smoky room that I understand that I must also embrace its reason for being”, she writes. A situation reflecting their years of marriage.
Photo credits: AGENCE / BESTIMAGE