Maurice Schumann

Maurice Schumann
Maurice Schumann (1969)
French Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office 22 June 1969 – 15 March 1973
President	Georges Pompidou
Prime Minister	Jacques Chaban-Delmas Pierre Messmer
Preceded by	Michel Debré
Succeeded by	André Bettencourt
Personal details
Born	(1911-04-10)10 April 1911 Paris, France
Died	9 February 1998(1998-02-09) (aged 86) Paris, France
Alma mater	University of Paris

Maurice Schumann (10 April 1911, Paris – 9 February 1998, Paris) was a French politician, journalist, writer, and hero of the Second World War who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs under Georges Pompidou from 22 June 1969 to 15 March 1973. Schumann was a member of the Christian democratic Popular Republican Movement.

The son of an Alsatian Jewish father and Roman Catholic mother, he studied at the Lycée Janson de Sailly and the Lycée Henri-IV. He converted to his mother's faith in 1937. He once said of France's fate when suffering the Allied bombing raids, ‘….and now we are reduced to the most atrocious fate: to be killed without killing back, to be killed by friends without being able to kill our enemies’.

During a meeting of the foreign ministers of the European Community in 1969, he stated France's conditions for Britain joining the community on its third application, i.e. questions of agricultural finance had to be settled first. Schumann died on 9 February 1998 in Paris, aged 86.

External links

• Interview about the French nuclear program for the WGBH series, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
• ordredelaliberation.fr