Louise Weiss

Louise Weiss (1893-1983) is known to readers of Saint-John Perse for the role it played at the poet's mother, remained in France while his son extended his exile in the United States. Its contribution to the’Tribute to Saint-John Perse published in 1976 in New French Review (No. 276) s’intitule “Alexis, exemplary son”.

But Saint-John Perse Foundation maintains letters and documents that highlight the seniority of his personal relationship with him, including telegrams signed by various pseudonyms (Allan, Wague, Indo-China), but also more political texts, as the text of a note submitted by Louise Weiss Joseph Bartholomew, Justice Minister Petain, to be sent to Marshal, and who pleads the cause of Alexis Leger. Louise Weiss had indeed been tempted to join the Vichy regime before, quickly, making the choice of exile and Resistance. She played an important role in women's struggle for the right to vote.

Before the war, she had always been, as Alexis Leger, one of the mainstays policy Aristide Briand and its efforts to save peace and build Europe. Magazine she founded and directed from January 1918, The new Europe, can be regarded as a kind of the Official Journal of the League of Nations. It evokes very often Aristide Briand and of course Alexis Leger, the chief of staff and “the most intimate and the most indispensable collaborator”.

This is Louise Weiss Briand had once confided that "political art is that of reconciling the desirable with the feasible. »

Several deliveries The new Europe are retained by Saint-John Perse Foundation, including a number of 1928 entirely to Pacte Briand-Kellogg and another 1935 containing “A portrait of Alexis Leger, diplomat” (absent from the collections of the National Library).

In successive volumes of its Memoirs, published from 1968, it is a large place in his fight for Europe.

 

"Louise Weiss communed with Alexis Leger in worship Briand. She defended the idea of ​​Europe as Don Quixote attacking windmills, with ardor and blindness ".
(E. Crouy-Chanel)

All his life, about Alexis Leger, so often attacked, it has been “fidelity Ivy” (The word E is. Crouy-Chanel). “At the time of misfortune, it was a safe and generous friend of his sentence and his dedication, bringing together a small group of friends who have supported his mother and sister remained in France 1940 and after the war, fought ardently to do back in his capacity as ambassador of France and besieged Georges Bidault that he should offer to an embassy”.