Maurice Schumann

Maurice Schumann (10 April 1911 – 9 February 1998) 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 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".

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.