PORTRAIT. Death of Bernadette Chirac, the conqueror

Bernadette Chirac liked to recall these biblical words: “No one knows the day or the hour. » The formula spoke of his faith, but also a form of lucidity in the face of time passing. She died on Friday June 5, at the age of 93, almost seven years after Jacques Chirac, whose life she had shared for more than six decades.

With her disappearance, one of the most singular figures of the Fifth Republic died: a woman long confined to the role of wife, before conquering an influence that belonged to her alone.

Coming from the Catholic upper middle class

His story begins far from the Corrèze countryside with which his name will remain associated. Bernadette Chodron de Courcel was born in Paris on May 18, 1933 into an upper-middle-class Catholic family where a sense of duty served as a compass. His father comes from a line of soldiers, industrialists and diplomats.

The war marks his childhood. Mobilized then taken prisoner in Germany, his father remained absent for several years. Young Bernadette then grew up between family shelters and the displacements imposed by the conflict, in a world where discipline and loyalty to commitments were not up for discussion. This education lastingly shapes her character and gives her a resistance which will often surprise those who only see her as a woman of the world or the wife of a political leader.

Love at first sight at Sciences-Po

In the fall of 1951, she entered the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. There she met Jacques Chirac. The future president is still just another ambitious student, but his energy, his appearance, his presence are impressive.

A relationship is formed between them which will survive the trials, injuries and upheavals of political life. The marriage was celebrated in March 1956 despite the reservations of the Chodron de Courcel family. Two daughters were born from this union: Laurence, in 1958, then Claude, in 1962.

“It wasn’t in the marriage contractâ€

Nothing then intended Bernadette Chirac to play a public role. Like many women of her generation and her background, she supports her husband’s career. He entered senior administration, then discovered politics in the wake of Georges Pompidou. Bernadette Chirac raises the children and ensures family balance. The choice is less obvious than it seems, but it involves renunciations because, very quickly, politics gradually imposes itself on the couple. “It wasn’t in the marriage contract,” his father would have observed when Jacques Chirac fully committed to this path.

Bernadette Chirac quickly understands that she will have to find her place in this all-consuming universe. Grit your teeth and endure the devouring ambition of her husband… and the escapades of this seducer… “The girls, it’s galloping”, she whispered… whose physique she praised. “They can hang on, the others! HAS”

But the desire to exist on its own was there. “When you are Jacques Chirac’s wife, you cannot remain too hidden. Or else we run the risk of being crushed. I don’t like being crushed,” she confided later. She will ultimately build this place far from Paris, in Corrèze.

It finds its place in Corrèze

While Jacques Chirac develops his local presence, she in turn invests in the life of the department. Elected municipal councilor of Sarran in 1971, deputy mayor in 1977, in 1979 she became the first woman to sit on the general council of Corrèze. This mandate, which she retained for several decades, transformed her life. Corrèze brings her what the status of wife could not offer: personal legitimacy.

For years, she traveled the canton, notably at the wheel of the red Peugeot 205, visiting farms, meeting traders, listening to residents. This proximity policy gives him knowledge of the field that many will recognize later. She also acquires an independence of mind which sometimes surprises even her own camp.

When Jacques Chirac finally reached the Élysée in 1995, after two presidential failures, Bernadette Chirac was no ordinary first lady. She is elected by universal suffrage. And this difference is essential. Because behind the protocol obligations and the meticulous management of the “Château” where she puts her paw and brings her sometimes uncompromising vision, a real political influence is developing. Several right-wing leaders seek his opinion and his intuition is deemed sound. She thus opposed the dissolution of the National Assembly in 1997 and vowed boundless enmity with Dominique de Villepin, the general secretary of the Elysée, favorite of the President and described as “Néro”. She also sees the risks of a widening divide between political leaders and voters. During the sequence which led to April 21, 2002 and the qualification of the extreme right in the second round of the presidential election, many believe that she understood better than others the depth of the political malaise.

This influence, however, remains unofficial, but it is real. And in the power struggles that cross the right, the support of the one nicknamed “the turtle” counts. Like his judgment too.

Under the construction of its popularity

At the same time, Bernadette Chirac built a popularity that few political actors would have imagined at the start of the 1990s. By taking the presidency of the Fondation Hôpitaux de Paris-Hôpitaux de France in 1994, she became the face of the famous Yellow Pieces. The operation already existed, but it gave it a considerable scale and mobilized stars like David Douillet around it. Every winter, she appears in the media to defend hospitalized children. Over time, its name almost became confused with that of the countryside. Later, she also supported the creation of structures intended for adolescents in distress, notably the Maison de Solenn.

This commitment is not only institutional. It finds its origin in an intimate pain of the Chirac couple. The illness of her daughter Laurence – suffering from anorexia and who weighed less than 30 kg when she completed her medical internship – and then the trials which punctuated her life, had a profound impact on Bernadette Chirac. The disappearance of her eldest, in 2016, remains one of the wounds from which she will never really recover. “The drama of my life,” she will say.

In the meantime, her image has changed and from out of date, she becomes popular, revamped by Karl Lagerfeld but still in a Chanel suit. Long mocked or caricatured, notably by the Guignols de l’Info on Canal + who call her “Mom” and make fun of her handbags, she is becoming a personality more and more appreciated by the French. His book “Conversation”, published in 2001 with Patrick de Carolis, met with great success. The public ultimately discovers a woman who is freer in her tone, more direct and often funnier than the representation that was made of her in the media, always quick to highlight her spicy remarks or the dark looks she gives to some of her interlocutors… including her husband. We remember the delicious sequence where the President was chatting with his neighbor and was glared at by his wife who was about to give a speech… “She is the woman of my life, we have accomplished so much together! “, the former President will say in his memoirs.

Essential on the right

This is because as the years pass, Bernadette Chirac ceases to be only the President’s wife. She became one of the faces of Chiraquism. Then, in the last years of power, one of the most listened to personalities in his political entourage and more broadly on the right. Thus, after 2007, while Jacques Chirac gradually withdrew from public life, she continued to intervene in right-wing debates. She supports Nicolas Sarkozy, whose ambiguities she had nevertheless measured. She maintains networks, loyalties and a capacity for influence that many continue to seek.

The disappearance of Jacques Chirac in 2019 closes a major chapter in his life. Already weakened, she only attended the private ceremony, where she was “very diminished”, according to a close friend of the family. “Bernie” then gradually withdrew from the public eye. Those who knew her find the woman of duty that she never ceased to be behind the media personality.

All her life, Bernadette Chirac tried to exist alongside a man whose political appetite seemed limitless. She shared the victories, the defeats, the injuries and the renunciations. She also paid the price. But she ended up conquering a territory that belonged to her: Corrèze, the Yellow Pieces, a personal popularity and an influence that no one really contested anymore. One day, his father said to him: “You are his fixed point. »Bernadette Chirac had made this sentence a guideline. She had accompanied the rises, the campaigns, the defeats, the intrigues, the family wounds and the years of power. She had sometimes suffered from this place. She had never abandoned her.

For a long time, the French only saw her as the wife of Jacques Chirac. At the end, they saw Bernadette Chirac. This is perhaps his greatest victory.