“His legendary “Good evening!” will be missed”: like many, Emmanuel Macron evoked the voice of Frédéric Mitterrand in the tribute he paid to the former minister of culture, who died on Thursday March 21. The Head of State salutes on
For his part, the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, speaks of a “man in love with everything that directly or indirectly affects culture”. “A man who had an insatiable thirst for learning and a constant project to do,” he added, believing that France was losing “a total man of culture.”
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had him appointed Minister of Culture in the Fillon government, describes “a deeply cultivated and delicate man, a being apart, sensitive and endearing, an unclassifiable personality, so far from life partisan.” Rachida Dati, who was a minister alongside Frédéric Mitterrand and today follows in his footsteps in culture, remembers on elegance.”
“Minister, man of letters, culture and the media, he leaves behind a great void after a life made of political passion and love of cinema,” mentioned, for her part, the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet. His counterpart in the Senate, Gérard Larcher, paid tribute to the “former minister with multiple cultural hats and unique voice of television”.
Jack Lang’s tribute
The former Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, salutes on X a man who “has served the arts with passion, erudition and love throughout his life”. “Our common loyalty to François Mitterrand united us deeply,” he continues.
Nephew of the former socialist president, Frédéric Mitterrand was for a time part of the Movement of Left Radicals (MRG), a center-left party, before supporting Jacques Chirac in 1995, during the presidential election.
The former socialist president, François Hollande, praises, like many others, the former minister’s “passion for culture” as well as “his commitment to cinema and television”.
To evoke one of her predecessors, another former minister of culture, Rima Abdul Malak, uses oxymorons, emphasizing “the panache and the melancholy. The lightness and torment” that Frédéric Mitterrand exuded.
“He was a great minister of culture, whose passion marked our country. His contribution to art and politics transcends divisions,” declared, for his part, the boss of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti.
Valérie Pécresse, president of the Ile-de-France region, who was a minister alongside him in the government of François Fillon, also describes on X a “great minister of culture”, “visionary” and “anti-conformist”. . “Île-de-France owes him the Ateliers Médicis in Clichy-Montfermeil, this Medici villa for artists born “on the wrong side of the ring road”,” she recalls.