Former first lady of France and human rights campaigner
Danielle Mitterrand in 2005.
In the last interview Danielle Mitterrand gave before her death at the age of 87, the former French first lady recalled berating her friend Fidel Castro for the torturing and killing of Cuban political prisoners. Surprised he did not tell her to shut up or throw her out, she asked why he put up with her nagging. "Because I like you a lot," replied the Cuban president.
Mitterrand was liked and admired by many, as much for her ability to take world leaders to task as for her unwavering support for minority and humanitarian issues, from the death penalty and discrimination to the lack of water or education in impoverished African villages. She was also respected for breaking the first lady mould and refusing to be defined by either her husband's role as head of state or the humiliation he heaped on her through his infidelity.
She was born Danielle Gouze in Verdun, the daughter of two leftwing academics. During the second world war, her father, by then a secondary school headteacher, was sacked by the Vichy administration after refusing to hand over a list of names of Jewish pupils and teachers in his school to the Nazis.
While her family harboured men being hunted by the Gestapo, Danielle joined the French Resistance at the age of 17, with her elder sister Christine, and was later awarded the prestigious Resistance Medal. In 1941, she helped François Mitterrand, a fellow member codenamed Captain Morland on the run from the Gestapo, by pretending to be his girlfriend, and the pair promptly fell in love. They married in 1944. The couple had three sons: Pascal, who died aged two months, Jean-Christophe and Gilbert.
When her husband was elected in 1981 for the first of his two seven-year terms, Danielle, devoted herself to human rights work and humanitarian causes. She became the French Foreign Office's favourite "bête noire", as, armed with good intentions, she rode roughshod over their diplomatic manoeuvres: the plight of the Kurds became a particular obsession. After nearly being blown up in a car bomb in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1992, which killed seven and wounded 17 others in the convoy, she vowed: "I will continue fighting until my death."
Her campaigning was somewhat overshadowed by the publicity that surrounded the many betrayals she suffered at the hands of her husband. When her husband's mistress, installed in a large apartment a stone's throw from the Elysée Palace, gave birth to a daughter, Mazarine, in 1974, Danielle later described it as "neither a discovery, nor a drama". She was, however, deeply shocked in 1994 when the existence of this second family, which was widely known in French political and media circles but protected by an unofficial conspiracy of silence, became public knowledge. At the time, also unknown to her, François had been diagnosed with the prostate cancer that would eventually kill him.
Danielle earned respect for her elegance and dignity, when at her husband's state funeral in January 1996, she allowed Mazarine to stand between her two sons in front of his tricolor-draped coffin. A final humiliation was still to come. Again, unbeknown to her, the former president had asked not to be buried in a joint grave in the Morvan national park in Burgundy, as the couple had planned, but with his family at Cluny in the Saône-et-Loire region.
"There was nothing banal or mediocre," she wrote of their life together. "For all those who loved us, François and Danielle were inseparable," she wrote afterwards.
She showed she had lost none of her fight by supporting anti-globalisation campaigners. "I fight for a new society. Money makes us mad, and yet it is only a tool ... today we are afraid of losing our house, our work, our health, of walking down the street, of meeting our neighbours. We are afraid of everything. And we are wrong. We have to construct a world based on solidarity."
After a spell in hospital in September, Danielle insisted on attending the 25th anniversary of her non-profit making humanitarian organisation France Libertés in October. She is survived by Jean-Christophe and Gilbert.
• Danielle Émilienne Isabelle Gouze, former first lady and human rights activist, born 29 October 1924; died 22 November 2011
Mitterrand was liked and admired by many, as much for her ability to take world leaders to task as for her unwavering support for minority and humanitarian issues, from the death penalty and discrimination to the lack of water or education in impoverished African villages. She was also respected for breaking the first lady mould and refusing to be defined by either her husband's role as head of state or the humiliation he heaped on her through his infidelity.
She was born Danielle Gouze in Verdun, the daughter of two leftwing academics. During the second world war, her father, by then a secondary school headteacher, was sacked by the Vichy administration after refusing to hand over a list of names of Jewish pupils and teachers in his school to the Nazis.
While her family harboured men being hunted by the Gestapo, Danielle joined the French Resistance at the age of 17, with her elder sister Christine, and was later awarded the prestigious Resistance Medal. In 1941, she helped François Mitterrand, a fellow member codenamed Captain Morland on the run from the Gestapo, by pretending to be his girlfriend, and the pair promptly fell in love. They married in 1944. The couple had three sons: Pascal, who died aged two months, Jean-Christophe and Gilbert.
When her husband was elected in 1981 for the first of his two seven-year terms, Danielle, devoted herself to human rights work and humanitarian causes. She became the French Foreign Office's favourite "bête noire", as, armed with good intentions, she rode roughshod over their diplomatic manoeuvres: the plight of the Kurds became a particular obsession. After nearly being blown up in a car bomb in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1992, which killed seven and wounded 17 others in the convoy, she vowed: "I will continue fighting until my death."
Her campaigning was somewhat overshadowed by the publicity that surrounded the many betrayals she suffered at the hands of her husband. When her husband's mistress, installed in a large apartment a stone's throw from the Elysée Palace, gave birth to a daughter, Mazarine, in 1974, Danielle later described it as "neither a discovery, nor a drama". She was, however, deeply shocked in 1994 when the existence of this second family, which was widely known in French political and media circles but protected by an unofficial conspiracy of silence, became public knowledge. At the time, also unknown to her, François had been diagnosed with the prostate cancer that would eventually kill him.
Danielle earned respect for her elegance and dignity, when at her husband's state funeral in January 1996, she allowed Mazarine to stand between her two sons in front of his tricolor-draped coffin. A final humiliation was still to come. Again, unbeknown to her, the former president had asked not to be buried in a joint grave in the Morvan national park in Burgundy, as the couple had planned, but with his family at Cluny in the Saône-et-Loire region.
"There was nothing banal or mediocre," she wrote of their life together. "For all those who loved us, François and Danielle were inseparable," she wrote afterwards.
She showed she had lost none of her fight by supporting anti-globalisation campaigners. "I fight for a new society. Money makes us mad, and yet it is only a tool ... today we are afraid of losing our house, our work, our health, of walking down the street, of meeting our neighbours. We are afraid of everything. And we are wrong. We have to construct a world based on solidarity."
After a spell in hospital in September, Danielle insisted on attending the 25th anniversary of her non-profit making humanitarian organisation France Libertés in October. She is survived by Jean-Christophe and Gilbert.
• Danielle Émilienne Isabelle Gouze, former first lady and human rights activist, born 29 October 1924; died 22 November 2011
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