Bernadette Chirac | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Chirac in 2009 | |
| Spouse of the President of France | |
| In role 17 May 1995 – 16 May 2007 | |
| President | Jacques Chirac |
| Preceded by | Danielle Mitterrand |
| Succeeded by | Cécilia Sarkozy |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Bernadette Thérèse Marie Chodron de Courcel (1933-05-18)18 May 1933 (age 92) Paris, France |
| Political party | Les Republicains |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3, includingClaude Chirac andAnh Dao Traxel |
| Residence(s) | Quai Voltaire, Paris (personal) Château de Bity,Sarran, Corrèze (personal) |
Bernadette Thérèse Marie Chirac (French pronunciation:[bɛʁnadɛtteʁɛzmaʁiʃiʁak]; néeChodron de Courcel; born 18 May 1933) is a French politician and the widow of the former presidentJacques Chirac.
She and Chirac met as students atSciences Po, and were married on 16 March 1956. They had two daughters: Laurence (born 4 March 1958, deceased 14 April 2016)[1] andClaude Chirac (born 6 December 1962). A former Vietnamese refugee,Anh Dao Traxel, is a foster daughter of Bernadette and Jacques Chirac.
Since 2001, Bernadette has been the patron ofOpération Pièces jaunes, a charity that helps children in French hospitals by collecting small donations. On 3 September 2007, she became the president of the "Fondation Claude-Pompidou" (Claude Pompidou Foundation), following the death ofClaude Pompidou, a former First Lady of France.
She was involved in her husband's successful 1995 presidential campaign and her personal popularity saw her play an important role as First Lady in her husband's reelection in 2002. She was also a councillor inCorrèze, the couple's homedépartement.
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Born in Paris on 18 May 1933, Bernadette Thérèse Marie Chodron de Courcel was the daughter of Jean-Louis Chodron de Courcel (1907–1985), sales director ofEmaux de Briare Inc., and Marguerite de Brondeau d'Urtières (1910–2000). She was the oldest of three children: her sister Catherine was born in 1946 and her brother Jérôme in 1948.
Her family were devout Catholics and she received a strict upbringing from her mother. Her father was called up in 1939 and imprisoned in Germany until the end of the Second World War. In June 1940, she and her mother fled toLot-et-Garonne, where she attended the Sainte-Marthe school inAgen. From 1941 to 1943, after the occupation of thezone libre, they fled again toGien in theLoiret. There she attended Sainte-Marie-des-Fleurs-et-des-Fruits school until the return of her father in 1945. The family settled in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. She went to theParis Institute of Political Studies in 1950 where she met and married her future husband. Like most women at the time, upon marrying, she did not take her degree.
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In 2001, Bernadette Chirac participated in a series of transcribed interviews with the conservative journalistPatrick de Carolis. These were published in a book calledConversation, which sold 350,000 copies in its first year of publication.[citation needed]
She appeared in public for the last time in summer 2018. Following her husband's death in 2019, she attended a private service at St. Louis Cathedral atLes Invalides, but was not present at the funeral mass held at theChurch of Saint Sulpice in Paris.[2][3]
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Bernadette Chirac was born into theChodron de Courcel family, an old aristocratic family of public servants, from theTrois-Évêchés. Her family includes military officers, goldsmiths, lawyers, diplomats and industrialists. They would become owners through marriages of factories inGien andBriare, in theLoiret, which were famed for theirporcelain andenamelmosaics. Like many old French families, Bernadette Chirac has several European royal families among her ancestors. In 1852, a decree by Napoleon III authorized the addition of Courcel, one of the family's properties, to their name. In 1867, Napoleon III made Alphonse Chodron de Courcel a hereditary baron for services rendered to the State.
Knight of theLegion of Honour (
France)[4]
Grand Cross of theRoyal Norwegian Order of Merit (
Norway)
Knight of theOrder of the Smile (
Poland)
Grand Officer of theOrder of the Star of Romania (
Romania)
Medal of Pushkin (
Russia)
Dame Grand Cross of theSovereign Military Order of Malta (
Sovereign Military Order of Malta)
Dame Grand Cross of theOrder of Charles III (
Spain)
Grand Cordon of theNational Order of Merit of Tunisia (
Tunisia)
Dame Grand Cross of theOrder of Pope Pius IX (.svg)
Holy See)[5]| Unofficial roles | ||
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| Preceded by | Spouse of the President of France 1995–2007 | Succeeded by |
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| National | |
| People | |
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