Maurice Schumann

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 the Second World War he broadcast news reports and commentaries into France on the BBC French Service some 1,000 times in programs such as Honneur et Patrie. He was called by some the "voice of France".

Schumann was subsequently Foreign Minister under the heads of government Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Pierre Messmer. His role in foreign and European policy was often described with the bon mot that he was “the most European of the Gaullists and the most Gaullist of the Europeans” (le plus européen des gaullistes et le plus gaulliste des européens).

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

Schumann died on 9 February 1998 in Paris, aged 86.