Louise Weiss

Louise Weiss (born January 25, 1893 in Arras , † May 26, 1983 in Paris ) was a French European politician, writer, journalist and feminist. The always politically committed journalist and writer was one of the first Europeans.

Louise Weiss in 1935 in the midst of Parisian suffragettes

Life

Louise Weiss came from an Alsatian family. The ancestors of her Jewish mother Jeanne Javal came from the Alsatian town of Seppois-le-Bas . Her father, the engineer Paul Louis Weiss , was an Alsatian Protestant . Luise Weiss grew up with five siblings in Paris, trained as a teacher against the will of the family and was a faculty member for the humanities and was awarded a diploma from Oxford University . From 1914 to 1918 she worked as a war nurse and founded a hospital in the Côtes-du-Nord .

From 1918 to 1934 she was editor of the magazine L'Europe nouvelle . From 1935 until the beginning of the war, she campaigned for women's suffrage. In 1936 Weiss ran for parliamentary elections as a member of the 5th arrondissement of Paris. During the Second World War she was active in the Resistance . She was a member of the Patriam Recuperare network and from 1942 to 1944 was editor-in-chief of the secret newspaper Nouvelle République . In 1945 she founded the Institute for Polemology (war and conflict research) in London together with Gaston Bouthoul . She has traveled to the Middle East, Japan, China, Vietnam, Africa, Kenya, Madagascar, Alaska, India, etc., made documentaries and wrote travelogues.

In 1975 she tried twice, unsuccessfully, to be admitted to the Académie Française . In 1979 she became a member of the European Parliament ( European People's Party ).

The main building of the European Parliament in Strasbourg named after Louise Weiss

The European

During the First World War she published her first press works under a pseudonym . In Paris in 1916 she came into contact with representatives of nations striving for independence, such as Edvard Beneš , Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk and Milan Rastislav Štefánik , her first great love. Between 1919 and 1939 she traveled extensively in Czechoslovakia . In 1918 she founded the weekly Europe nouvelle (New Europe), which she published until 1934. Thomas Mann , Gustav Stresemann , Rudolf Breitscheid and Aristide Briand were among the authors. Louise Weiss described the pioneer of the Franco-German rapprochement between the world wars as a "peace pilgrim", "my dear Louise" he called his important colleague. Europe dreamed of unification and in 1930 she founded the École de la Paix , a private institute for international relations. When the National Socialists came to power in Germany , the possibility of unification was over.

In 1979 Louise Weiss was a candidate for the then Gaullist party and was elected member of the European Parliament in the first direct election. From the first direct election of the European Parliament on July 17, 1979 until her death on May 26, 1983, she was the first female President of the European Parliament.

The women's rights activist

In 1934 she and Cécile Brunsvicg founded the association La femme nouvelle (The New Woman), which sought women's suffrage and the empowerment of women in public life. She took part in campaigns for women's suffrage in France, organized suffragette squads, demonstrated and had herself chained to a lantern with other women in Paris. In 1935, she sued the French Conseil d'État against the “incapacity of women to vote” without success .

Works

Political works

• La République Tchécoslovaque , 1919
• Milan Stefanik , Prague 1920

Biographies

• Souvenirs d'une enfance républicaine , Paris, 1937
• Ce que femme veut, Paris , 1946
• Mémoires d'une Européenne , Paris 1968–1976
• Mémoires d'une Européenne , Tome [Volume] I: 1893-1919
• Mémoires d'une Européenne , Tome [Volume] II: 1919-1934
• Mémoires d'une Européenne , le Sacrifice du Chevalier 3 September 1939–9 June 1940

Novels

• Délivrance , Paris 1936
• La Marseillaise , T. I and II Paris, 1945; T. III Paris 1947
• Sabine Legrand , Paris 1951
• Dernières Voluptés , Paris, 1979

Plays

• Arthur ou les joies you suicide
• Sigmaringen ou les potentats du néant
• Le récipiendaire
• La patronne
• Adaptation of the Dernières Voluptés

Travel reports

• L'or, le camion et la croix , Paris, 1949
• Le voyage enchanté , Paris, 1960
• Le Cachemire , Les Albums des Guides Bleus, Paris, 1955

German editions

• Speeches: Strasbourg, July 17 and 18, 1979 / by Louise Weiss and Simone Veil . - [Strasbourg]: European Parliament, 1979.
• To the unborn. Letter to an embryo and the embryo's reply sent by Etienne Wolf; [for this edition the original has been revised and added essential parts] / Louise Weiss. Foreword by Helmut Schmidt . [German by Elmar Tophoven and Erika Tophoven-Schöningh ]. Wiesbaden; Munich: Limes-Verlag, 1980. ISBN 3-8090-2165-2

Honors

• The new European Parliament building on the banks of the Ill in Strasbourg bears her name, as does a school building in the same city by Fritz Beblo .
• In Paris, a street in the 12th arrondissement is named after her.
• Honorary member of the University Superior Council in Strasbourg
• Winner of the Robert Schuman Prize
• Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor
• The former Hamm high school in Hamburg has been named Louise-Weiss-Gymnasium since August 1, 2020 .

literature

• Florence Hervé : Frauengeschichten - Frauengesichter , Volume 4.Trafo Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-89626-423-0 , 150 pages, numerous. Fig.
• Sem C. Sutter: Looting of Jewish Collections in France by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg . In: Jewish book possession as looted property (= Second Hanover Symposium, edited by Regine Dehnel), Frankfurt am Main 2006, (Journal for Libraries and Bibliography, Special Issues 88), pp. 131-134 ( Library of Louise Weiss )

Web links

• French biography
• The Louise Weiss Museum in the Rohan Castle
• Entry on Louise Weiss in the Members' database of the European Parliament
• Louise White. The first female editor of an international review . In: Berliner Leben: Zeitschr. for beauty and art , 1928, issue 3.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ judaisme.sdv.fr