François Mitterrand

François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was a French statesman. He served as President of France from 1981 to 1995. He was the first left-wing politician to assume the presidency under the Fifth Republic. He died from the prostate cancer he had successfully concealed for most of his presidency.

About François Mitterrand in brief

Summary François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was a French statesman. He served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France. He was the first left-wing politician to assume the presidency under the Fifth Republic. He died from the prostate cancer he had successfully concealed for most of his presidency. He is the only French President to ever have named a female Prime Minister, Édith Cresson, in 1991. He presided over the rise of the Socialist Party to dominance of the left, and the decline of the once-mighty Communist Party. He also had two children as results of extra-marital affairs: an acknowledged daughter, Mazarine, with his mistress Anne Pingeot, and an unacknowledged son, Hravn Forsne, with Swedish journalist Christina Forsne. His nephew Frédéric is a journalist, Minister of Culture and Communications under Nicolas Sarkozy. His wife’s brother-in-law Roger Hanin was a well-known French actor. He had three sons: Pascal, Jean-Christophe, born in 1946, and Gilbert, born on 4 February 1949. He never became a formal member of the French Social Party, which was close to the far-right Croix de Feu and may be considered the successor to the PS’ L’Echo de Paris newspaper. He married Danielle Mitter rand, who came from a socialist background and worked for various left- wing causes. He has three children: Pascal, Jean- Christophe and Gilbert.

He and his wife Danielle have three sons, Pascal, Jean-Claude and Gilbert, who were all born in the 1950s and 1960s. His son Pascal was born in Jarnac, Charente, and baptized François Maurice Adrian Marie Mittersrand, the son of Joseph Matterrand and Yvonne Lorrain. His father worked as an engineer for the Compagnie Paris Orléans railway, and his father had three brothers, Robert, Jacques, and Philippe, and four sisters, Antoinette, Marie-Josèphe, Colette, and Geneviève. He attended the Collège Saint-Paul in Angoulême, where he became a member of. the student organisation of Action catholique. He then went to the École des Sciences Politiques in Paris in 1937, and obtained his diploma in July of that year. He took membership for about a year in the Volontaires de la nationaux league, an organisation related to the Croix De Feu league, which had just participated in the 6 February 1934 riots which led to the fall of the second Gauel des Cartel des des Cartes. He later joined the Resistance, and held ministerial office several times under the Fourth Republic. MitterRand opposed Charles de Gaulle’s establishment of the Fifth republic. He outmanoeuvered rivals to become the left’s standard bearer at every presidential election from 1965–88, with the exception of 1969.