PIASA, Frédéric Chambre - its Executive Director and auctioneer - and Jean-Baptiste de Proyart - expert bookseller - are honoured to present at auction the love letters of François Mitterrand (1916-1995) to Marie-Louise Terrasse, known as Catherine Langeais (1923-1998), a remarkable woman who has been a famous journalist in the early decades of French television.
Neither of them need to be introduced. Their passionate and dramatic love from 1938 to 1942 was well known, but its handwritten and material reality did not exist, until today
These 330 autographed letters from François Mitterrand to Catherine Langeais mark, in an almost unequalled historical and loving intimacy, the long personal and weekly stages of one of the darkest moments of French history. François Mitterrand, seven years older than Catherine Langeais, loved her with an absolute passion, going from trial to trial. His letters bear witness to this each time. Catherine Langeais loved François Mitterrand. They met at the ball of the École Normale Supérieure on the rue d'Ulm on January 22nd, 1938. Their first kiss was on May 5th, 1938, on a bench in the Luxembourg, a kiss that is regularly recalled in anniversary letters such as the one dated May 3rd, 1940. They became officially engaged on March 3th, 1940, after having been apart from each other between February and December 1939. But François Mitterrand understood as early as December 1939 that the estrangement from February 1939 to December 1939 had been marked by a love disagreement.
![MITTERRAND, François Lettre autographe signée à Marie-Louise Terrasse, dite Catherine Langeais [Meuse, près de Stenay], 22 mars 1940](https://cellar-c2.services.clever-cloud.com/medias.piasa.amphibee.fr/images/441632_6193ab0e6bd379.07365581.jpeg)
Then, the "Phoney War", the French Campaign and the imprisonment in Germany for François Mitterrand will make their love impossible, thus creating a love story whose last letters bear the sad ending.
These 330 letters can be classified into different periods:
1. Those of the meeting: from the first known letter dated May 28th, 1938 to that of November 2nd, 1938, that is 37 letters. Most of them were written at 104 rue de Vaugirard, or, for some of them, during the summer of 1938, in Jarnac.
2. Those of the military service that François Mitterrand carried out at the fort of Ivry: from November 4th, 1938 to September 1st, 1939, day of his mobilization and last letter from Ivry. A total of 77 letters.
3. Those of the " Phoney War ": François Mitterrand held a position in Alsace and then at the extreme western tip of the Maginot Line from September 10th, 1939 to the 9th of May 1940, in the 23rd Colonial Infantry Regiment. These letters are marked by the engagement of March 1940. But François Mitterrand understood as early as December 1939 that the separation of the months of February to December 1939 had been marked by a disagreement in love. A total of 92 letters.
4. Remarkable letters from the French Campaign: from May 10th, 1940 ("I am leaving for our fighting positions") to the short letter of June 11th, 1940 ("I must stop this letter suddenly"). A total of 31 letters.
5. The Lunéville period. François Mitterrand was wounded before Verdun on June 14th 1940, the day the Germans entered Paris. Until June 29th, no letter survives and he probably did not write anything. From June 29th to August 6th, 1940, the date of his departure for Germany ("I'm leaving for Germany. You can imagine how sad it is"), François Mitterrand wrote letters recounting his battles, his injury ("I was wounded in front of Verdun on the 14th, in the morning", he wrote on June 29th), and the moment when he was taken prisoner ("this captivity will not be eternal! I will come back to love you", June 30th). A total of 15 letters.
6. The period of the letters from the Stalags. The first letter, dated August 16th 1940, is written from Stalag IX A, in Hesse: "Life is not over because it stops now". François Mitterrand was to experience life in camp, give literature lessons to his comrades and discover his political talent, first in Stalag IX C, deep in Thuringia, then from April 1941 in Stalag IX A, in Hesse, which held several tens of thousands of prisoners. He continued to love Catherine Langeais and made two attempts to escape to join her, the first of which involved walking more than 600 kilometres through Germany at night. He announces his attempts to Catherine Langeais by referring to himself under the pseudonym of "Fatoune". He escaped each time to find her, having gradually understood that his love was lost but thinking that a final meeting could salvage it. The last letter dates from December 3rd, 1941 ("Fatoune has failed his second conservatory exit exam"). François Mitterrand wrote it from a Stalag in Moselle after his second attempt had failed and a few days before the third one, which was to be the right one, thus avoiding being sent to Poland. In all, 77 letters from the Stalags.
Sometimes one-sided, but most often mutual - since the voice of the lover can be heard throughout these lines, and despite the tragic outcome of the definitive separation in 1942, these letters from François Mitterrand, "mad by love", as Stendhal, whom he loved so much, wrote, show how he was able to overcome the trials of life. In spite of the wounded love of late 1939, he transformed their love into a marriage project, made concrete by an engagement (March 3rd, 1940). For Catherine Langeais, the physical wound of June 1940 was a bloody one, as it pushed him even further away from his fiancée. In order to reach her and to avoid wasting away, he made three escape attempts between 1941 and 1942. The last one was successful. During this time in the prison camps, François Mitterrand was also able to organise the literary and intellectual life of tens of thousands of French soldiers, through his knowledge and his letter, discovering his own talent, forming his political conscience and opening himself up to social conditions other than his own.
No response from Catherine Langeais is known or published today. The soldier François Mitterrand, wounded in June 1940, lost part of this correspondence in an ambush, as recounted in the letter of May 18th 1940, the seventh letter of the Campaign of France. Catherine Langeais, after the death of her husband Pierre Sabbagh (1918-1994), another major television personality, and no doubt marked by the grief of bereavement, lost these letters from François Mitterrand when he wanted to do some work on his flat. They were found by a broker who has kept them until now, and who is now putting them on sale with the agreement of Marie-Louise Terrasse's heirs.
These letters from François Mitterrand are mostly long and sometimes dramatic and, in the end, tragic. All of them, line by line, bear witness to a passionate love, expressed in the most beautiful French language imaginable. When he was at the Front in June 1940, or in the German Stalags, each of them could be compared to the very famous letters from Bonaparte to Josephine.
This catalogue is a simple transcription. We do not wish to make any comment and only provide a simple punctual insight here and there. The infinite prevalence of love and fidelity in friendship can be deduced from each of these letters. The ambition in love and the patriotic courage of the wounded and escaped soldier are revealed here - what could be more beautiful?
