Mazarine Pingeot: “I did not have historical knowledge of my father, but intimate knowledge” – rts.ch

At 49, Mazarine Pingeot looks back on an extraordinary adolescence in “Onze quai Branly”, an intimate story. The title of the work comes from an apartment lent by the State, which was the secret address where she lived with her mother and François Mitterrand. “It was a doubly protected place, a border between my hidden life and the city,” she confided Tuesday in La Matinale.

For the daughter of the former President of the Republic (1981-1995), returning to the places of this youth marked by clandestinity was a moving experience: “The places awaken a memory of the body. The gestures, the smells, the noises, everything comes back,” she explains. However, despite a day spent in this space full of memories, she was unable to sleep there, overcome by anxiety.

A unique father-daughter relationship

Within the walls of this apartment, family intimacy took precedence over politics. François Mitterrand, statesman and secret father, was a pillar of this household. “It was not a place of performance, but only a place of intimacy,” relates Mazarine Pingeot, who details sunny breakfasts with the radio on, where news about her father mixed with family rituals. almost ordinary.

We had to relearn life, this time with a claimed and known identity.

In this hidden youth, the writer was not so interested in François Mitterrand, President of the Republic. He was above all a father. “For me, he is my father. He is not a historical character and therefore I do not have historical knowledge of him but an intimate knowledge,” she explains.

Mazarine Pingeot also remembers that the most frequent question asked to her father was: “Who do you prefer?”. A request that is quite common among children, but which may have been further accentuated by her status as a hidden child. “I wanted to be preferred, elected, justified, I wanted the best, if nothing at all,” she writes in her work.

The weight of the secret revealed

In 1994, the secret was finally shattered. François Mitterrand’s parentage is revealed on the front page of Paris Match and Mazarine Pingeot’s life is completely turned upside down. “Overnight, my status changed. I went from invisible to the object of curiosity,” she recalls.

“We had to relearn life, this time with a claimed and known identity. Finally, passing into the status of someone who is known without having wanted it. It’s always very, very violent, because it’s to become an image, a subject of conversation and to belong to others a little and when you have grown up in discretion, it is something overwhelming,” she concludes.

Comments collected by Delphine Gendre

Adaptation web: Tristan Hertig