Zürcher Nachrichten - Bernadette Chirac, France's dedicated and determined ex-first lady

Quiet, traditionally Roman Catholic and always immaculately turned out in classic suits and styled hair, she dedicated herself to the career of the man she married when she was 22 years old.

Jacques Chirac died on September 26, 2019, aged 86, after serving as president from 1995 to 2007.

"She is the woman of my life, we have accomplished so much together," Jacques Chirac -- who also served as prime minister and mayor of Paris -- wrote in his memoirs in 2012.

Current President Emmanuel Macron said Bernadette Chirac "changed so many lives with discretion and determination" and "left her mark on our history".

"An era comes to an end with her passing. I feel, like so many French people, a deep nostalgia," added Jacques Chirac's successor and protege, Nicolas Sarkozy.

- 'Not always easy' -

The couple met at Paris's political science university Sciences Po in 1954 and married two years later -- a match considered below the rank of Bernadette, who was born on May 18, 1933 into the aristocratic Chodron de Courcel family.

The marriage, during which she had two daughters, was not always easy, with Chirac admitting publicly to having a weakness for women and rumours abounding of affairs.

In her book "Conversation" (2001), she spoke about her Catholic faith and her opposition to abortion -- but also with unusual frankness about the tests through which a family can be put by a husband's infidelity.

Describing Jacques Chirac as a "handsome man" who had "enormous success with women", she wrote: "Nowadays at the first difficulty people just give up. But as far as I was concerned, I hesitated because I had children, and also because I was the prisoner of certain family traditions.

"Convention had it that in this sort of situation you put up a front and just kept going. In any case I warned him often enough: the day Napoleon left Josephine, he lost everything."

Jacques Chirac was elected head of state in 1995 and 2002, his 12 years in the job making him France's second longest-serving president after his Socialist predecessor Francois Mitterrand.

- 'Turtle' -

Bernadette described herself as a mere "wagon" hooked onto her powerhouse "engine" spouse, while he referred to his determined and sometimes authoritarian wife as "a turtle".

But she was also seen as an electoral asset in his campaigning, with her cheerful personality and charity work for sick children boosting her image, while her conservatism reassured right-wing voters.

Her discretion and immaculate appearance also made Bernadette 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".

Besides being patron of several charities, she carved out her own modest political career as long-time elected councillor for the couple's rural home department of Correze and a member of the municipal council of the department's small village of Sarran.

In darker times in later life, a protective Bernadette closely guarded information about Chirac's deteriorating health as a degenerative neurological disorder took hold and he was confined to a wheelchair.

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.

After his death Bernadette, by then said to be in frail health, attended a private funeral service but was not present at the main ceremony attended by dozens of world leaders.

In 2016 their eldest daughter, Laurence, died aged 58, after a heart attack, having suffered with anorexia since 1974.

bur-br-jmy-sjw/rlp

B.Brunner--NZN