Until the age of 19, Mazarine Pingeot's existence was a well-kept secret. It's in one of Paris Match in 1994 that the French will get to know him. Mazarine Pingeot is the fruit of an adulterous relationship between the former President of the Republic and Anne Pingeot, art historian. For many years, François Mitterrand therefore hid this paternity which was however on several occasions on the verge of being revealed, a revelation which he ended up validating with the weekly to put an end to years of secrecy.
Since then, Mazarine Pingeot has told her story. She recently spoke with journalist Maïtena Biraben from the media Mesdames. The opportunity for her to promote her book 11 quai Branlypublished by Flammarion last October. In this work, she recounts her daily life “from the age of nine to 16, in an empty staff apartment, aware that no one should guess his presence” as the publishing house tells it.
Almost all her life and until now, Mazarine Pingeot was not called Mitterrand even though everyone ended up knowing that she was the daughter of the famous President of the Republic, with whom she had a ritual. She explained it.
Mitterrand, a name always difficult for Mazarine to bear
His book 11, quai Branlyshe signs it Mazarine M Pingeot. A discreet way of putting one's identity into the minds of those who read it but which was not very obvious. She herself doesn't really know how to explain this complication: “I don't really have an answer to that question, I keep Pingeot because that's the name I grew up with, and it was my pen name from the start. I don’t want to change that.”
Rather than integrating Mitterrand into his name so abruptly, Mazarine did things gently: “I intervened in a very discreet manner this M which is not so discreet, which gestures towards this paternity, and at the same time to half of my story which was to be without. And since it's a name I had to hide, it's still weird for me to write it. There is always a moment of anxiety for me.”
It is at Paris Match precisely that she chose to confide last October about this aspect of her life, revealing in passing her greatest regret concerning her father: “My father died and I would have liked him to meet my children. If he had lived like Edgar Morin, until at least 103 years old, he would have known them. We don't imagine that our parents are going to die, as old as they are.“She also returned to the brutality of the revelation of her existence: “I had spent my whole life being invisible and suddenly I was displayed all over Paris, people pointed at me, I was no longer a human being but an object of curiosity. I went from one status to another without transition, radically opposed. I felt like I was being trapped and deceived, like I was betraying my pact of invisibility. It was very complicated.“A status that she has learned to tame over time.
