what did their daughter Pauline die of at the age of 19?

For France Gall, it was a second heartbreak. In the 1960s, the French discovered the chubby face and blonde bob of Isabelle Gall, who quickly made her way into the hit parade of Hi buddies, becoming one of the muses of the yéyé years alongside Sylvie Vartan, Sheila, but also Françoise Hardy. And if her music has been talked about, her love stories too. Known for having frequented Claude François, who reportedly told her of their breakup by telephone just after her victory at theEurovision, the singer also had a long love story with Michel Berger, whom she met in 1973 on a radio show. The following year marked the beginning of their collaboration in music, as well as their relationship, which continued with a marriage in June 1976, and the birth of two children: Pauline, in 1978, and Raphaël, in 1981.

But the joy of the birth of these two children is also mixed with concern, since their daughter Pauline is cystic fibrosis disease. A rare and often fatal genetic disease that affects the digestive and respiratory tracts, with which the young girl will live as with a sword of Damocles above her head. Shocked by the disappearance of Michel Berger in 1992, France Gall then decided, in 1996, to put her career on hold in order to take care of her eldest daughter, whose state of health was deteriorating day by day. Pauline ends up succumb to the disease at the age of 19, on December 15, 1997, plunging his mother into terrible grief. knowing “doomed”the daughter of Michel Berger and France Gall had left a will to her mother, in which she asked her to be “buried next to dad”said producer Bernard Saint-Paul.

France Gall upset by the death of her daughter

A last wish which was almost not honored since at the time the sister of Michel Berger, Françoise, who was also the guardian of their mother Annette Haas, had refused to accede to this request. Finally, in October 1999, France Gall obtained the transfer of the artist’s burial place to the concession of their daughter Pauline, then located a few meters further in the 29th division of the Montmartre cemetery, in Paris. A very symbolic gesture for the singer, who had mentioned her beloved daughter in 2015 in a moving testimony. “I immediately wanted to be the successful mom […] to integrate this idea of ​​having lost a child. To be able, more easily, to live with that. […] My way of thinking was, ‘It’s amazing to have known her for 19 years. They took it away from me, but they still gave it to me for 19 years. For Michel, that’s also what I thought”, she confided. Since 2018, she has been resting by their side.