Bernadette Chirac, widow of former French President Jacques Chirac, dies at 93, ending an era in French political history and public life
PARIS: Bernadette Chirac, widow of former French president Jacques Chirac and known as the loyal companion of one of France’s key postwar politicians, died at the age of 93, their daughter told AFP Saturday.
She “passed away peacefully surrounded by her family in the evening” on Friday, said Claude Chirac. Bernadette Chirac had just turned 93 on May 18, she added.
Her charismatic husband served as president from 1995-2007, famously opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Jacques Chirac died in 2019.
She also stood by her late husband despite his notorious romantic affairs with other women, something both referred to in their memoirs.
She lived to see her husband become the first president to be convicted for graft when he was given a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for syphoning off public money to pay people working for his political party while Paris mayor.
There was also tragedy in their family life — in 2016 their eldest daughter, Laurence, died aged 58, after a heart attack and having suffered with anorexia since 1974.
‘Era comes to end’
But Bernadette Chirac was also the only French first lady to have held political office in her own right, as a general councillor in the central Correze department, a position she held continuously from 1979 to 2015.
Her discretion and immaculate appearance also made Bernadette Chirac into something of an icon herself. In 2023 French screen legend Catherine Deneuve starred in a film about her years as first lady, titled simply “Bernadette”.
President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Bernadette Chirac as a “great woman of heart” who “left her mark on our history” and “changed so many lives with discretion and determination.”
She also impacted “the Correze region where she was an elected representative, and also the lives of millions of anonymous patients, thanks to her deep and constant commitment” as head of a hospitals foundation, he wrote on X.
Macron’s wife Brigitte, the longest serving first lady since Bernadette and who has taken a high public profile during her husband’s time in office, also paid tribute.
“From 2017 onwards, Mrs Chirac shared great help, support and guidance with me,” Brigitte Macron said in a written statement to AFP, referring to the year her husband won his first term.
“We always stayed in touch, right up until very recently,” she added.
Jacques Chirac’s former protege Nicolas Sarkozy, who succeeded him as president but failed in his bid for a second term and then became embroiled in legal troubles, said he had lost a “great friend who always supported me both politically and personally”.
“An era comes to an end with her passing. I feel, like so many French people, a deep nostalgia,” said Sarkozy, who last year was briefly jailed over a graft conviction.
“My only consolation is that she will now be able to reunite with Jacques — who must have been so bored without her — and Laurence, who meant so much in her life,” he wrote on X.
