Date of birth:

April 10th, 1911 (Paris, XVIth, France)

Date of death:

February 9th, 1998 (Paris, France)

Nationality:

French

Maurice Schumann, son of a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother, was a French politician, journalist, writer and hero of the Second World War.

During the Second World War, he worked for the BBC French Service. In programmes such as “Honneur et Patrie”, he broadcast news reports and commentaries to occupied France around 1,000 times and was referred to by some as the “voice of France”. He once said of the Allied bombing of France: “... and now we are condemned to the most horrible fate: to be killed without killing back, to be killed by friends without being able to kill our enemies”.

After the war, he entered politics and, as a member of the Christian Democratic People's Republican Movement, served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in various governments. In the late 1960s, he was closely involved in the negotiations on Britain's accession to the European Community.

After narrowly losing his constituency to a socialist candidate in the March 1973 parliamentary elections, he resigned as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Schumann died in Paris on 9 February 1998, at the age of 86.

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• Photo 1: Richard Heus
• - Maurice SCHUMANN | L'Ordre de la Libération et son Musée