Almost 30 years ago, on November 10, 1994, France and the world discovered the existence of Mazarine Pingeot, the hidden daughter of President Mitterrand. After hiding it for 20 years, the old president allowed a photo to be published on the front page of Paris Match showing them leaving a restaurant. These days, the one that all of France calls Mazarine is publishing a book, 11 quai Branly, named after the address where she lived in hiding for years.
I remember November 10, 1994 very well. The editor-in-chief of bel RTL called me at 5 a.m. to tell me the news: “Mitterrand has a hidden daughter! You have to do your paper this morning on this scoop”. And I answered him: “What scoop? Everyone knows it.” And it’s true that in the Parisian journalistic microcosm, everyone knew. But, at the time, social networks did not exist and the private opinions of the powerful were respected. It was my friend and my master, the great editorialist Philippe Alexandre, who informed me. He even made a coded allusion in one of his books, evoking a morganatic child of the president.
Legend has it that Mazarine, as a little girl, wrote on her information sheet on the first day of school: parents’ profession, President of the Republic. Sent to the principal for insolence, the latter had to free the teacher. No, this little girl didn’t lie. It’s true. So from November 1994, all the French knew because the very ill president had decided to lift the veil before his death.
I have faded to the point of becoming invisible to myself
Born in 1974, to the love of François Mitterrand and a museum curator, Anne Pingeot, Mazarine lived from 9 to 16 years old, 11 quai Branly, in what is called the Palais de l’Alma, former stables of Napoleon III, transformed into official apartments for Elysée staff. François Mitterrand, who officially still lived with his wife Danielle, came there almost every evening.
But although much loved, Mazarine found this false family life difficult to bear. “I did not live on Quai Branly and yet I lived there. I faded to the point of becoming invisible to myself”, she told Paris Match. Hence this book, her fifteenth, dedicated to this era which marked her for life.
She says that at 16, she preferred to leave to take refuge with her grandparents in the provinces. “I left because I felt like I was going to die.” Later, at age 20, when his existence was revealed, she suffered a shock. “I did not change in relation to others. I changed inside myself. Everything that had constituted me no longer existed. Secret was an ontological status. There was no more secret, no more silence “.
A brilliant student, doctor of philosophy, she became a professor, then a writer. Now aged 49, mother of three children, she can now look her past in the face. Even if for the French, she will forever remain the hidden child of Quai Branly.
Mazarine Pingeot François Mitterand France
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