France’s former first lady Bernadette Chirac dies

She was the only first lady in France to hold a political office herself. From 1979 to 2015, Bernadette Chirac was a member of the General Council of the Corrèze department. During their 60-year marriage, she accompanied her husband’s entire political career, who was President of France from 1995 to 2007. Jacques Chirac died in 2019 at the age of 86.

Born Bernadette Chodron de Courcel in Paris in 1933, she grew up in a diplomatic family in the capital’s upscale 16th arrondissement. At the elite university Sciences Po Paris She met Jacques Chirac as a student and the two married in 1956.

president Emmanuel Macron praised the former first lady as a “great lady with heart” who “shaped our history” and “changed so many lives with humility and perseverance.” In the Corrèze department she “shaped the fate of millions of nameless sick people – thanks to her deep and tireless commitment,” Macron explained in the online service X with a view to Chirac’s role as head of the “Fondation des Hôpitaux de Paris – Hôpitaux de France” foundation.