Bernadette Chirac grew up in the codes of the aristocracy. But does the former first lady, now 91 years old, really belong to the nobility?
Bernadette Chirac, née Chodron de Courcel, daughter of the commercial director of the factories Jean-Félix Bapterosses and Co.was raised in a bourgeois family with the codes of aristocracy. But does the former first lady, now 91 years old and living as a recluse in Paris with her daughter Claude as her caregiver, really come from the nobility as indicated by the particle of her last name?
Bernadette Chirac: why her family didn’t want her to marry Jacques Chirac
When Bernadette Chodron de Courcel met her future husband Jacques Chirac, in 1950, at Sciences Po, her family saw red. And for good reason, he does not belong to the aristocracy. “Bernadette Chodron de Courcel is a fairly strict aristocrat with the values of a young woman from the aristocracy of her time, intelligent and very conventional (…) Jacques Chirac is very different: he comes from a family of teachers, senior executives, that is to say the bourgeoisie. So when he meets Bernadette, it seems like a misalliance in her family.“, explained the journalist from The Express Michel Feltin-Palas, author of Chirac novel. The marriage finally took place in 1956, not without problems.
Is Bernadette Chirac really an aristocrat?
However, if Bernadette Chodron de Courcel was raised as an aristocrat, it seems that she was not quite one. According to the media Point of viewit was in 1852 that Bernadette Chirac’s ancestors were offered the right to add “de Courcel” to their popular family name, “Chodron”.
Napoleon III had given the title of hereditary baron to one of his great-granduncles, Alphonse Chodron de Courcel. However, this status would not be transferable to non-direct descendants of this man. Theoretically, Bernadette Chirac and her parents could not have benefited from this title of nobility.
But some ancestors closer to Bernadette Chirac acquired a no less prestigious status, notably her uncle, Geoffroy Chodron de Courcel, a French diplomat who helped General de Gaulle during the appeal of June 18, 1944. And then, in the heart of the French, Bernadette Chirac will forever remain the queen of the Yellow Pieces.
