Irène Laure was a French socialist activist and politician, a member of the French Resistance and an MP in the 1945 parliament. She became known from 1947 onwards as she led a campaign of several months duration through Germany to ask for forgiveness and foster French-German reconciliation.
Life
Irène Guelpa was born in Lausanne on 18 September 1898 to a public works contractor's family. Her family was Protestant. Irène's political and social conscience was awakened by her observation of the hard life of her father's workers. She later chose to become a nurse.
Political career
Irène Guelpa was 16 when she joined the Socialist Party. On 21 October 1945 - the first election ever open to women in France - she was elected on Gaston Defferre's ticket as an MP to the French National Assembly. She was not reelected in the following election; the Socialist Party's vote had been seriously eroded by the progress of the Gaullists but she became for many years the national secretary of the French Socialist Women organisation.
In spite of the risks Irène Laure worked for the Resistance. Under German occupation, her children's health suffered, especially for lack of appropriate food. In May 1944, she led a "hunger march" in Marseille. In order to avoid arrest and deportation of the men, she made the march a women-only event. Her particular part of the march walked 17 km from Aubagne to the préfecture in Marseille, 4000 women demanding larger bread and food allowances. Irène Laure negotiated directly with the Préfet who tried - in vain - to silence her by threatening her. She came through the occupation years without being arrested but her son Louis was arrested and was said to have been tortured during his detention.
Caux
In 1947, she accepted an invitation of representatives of Initiatives of Change, to join the international conferences in Caux, a conference centre just opened the year before. Like the creators of Caux she is keen to participate in the reconstruction of Europe, but upon her arrival the announcement of a massive delegation of Germans made her decide to leave at once. Her memory of her family' suffering under German occupation is too strong for her to talk to Germans. Challenged at the last minute by Frank Buchman the chief inspirator of Caux, about her true vision for Europe and whether Europe can be rebuilt without the Germans, she reluctantly stayed in Caux. She finally accepted one meeting with one German lady and that meeting would turn her around. After Irène Laure spent most of the meeting discharging all her resentment on her interlocutor, the German lady finally introduced herself: she was Clarita von Trott, the widow of Adam von Trott, a lawyer from Berlin, member of the German Resistance, arrested and executed after the missed attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944. She was imprisoned and her two daughters placed in a SS-run orphanage. She concluded along these lines: "I realise that we didn't resist strong enough, nor soon enough. Because of us you have suffered a great deal. Forgive us please." Remembering this moment Irène Laure used to say "On that day I felt free, free as never before". On the same day, she asked to speak in front of the main meeting. 500 people were there including 100 Germans. After briefly telling of her Resistance background, she explained that although nothing could be forgotten, she could decide to forgive and, to the utter amazement of the audience, she concluded by asking the Germans to forgive her for her hate. The Germans present remained speechless until a German lady asked for the word to respond positively. Former Hitlerjugend and Wehrmacht veteran Peter Petersen remembered this meeting vividly: "I was shaken. For several nights in a row I was unable to sleep. All my past was revolted against this woman's courage.... One day, we told her how deeply sorry we were and our shame for what our people had done to her and others. We promised her to dedicate our lives to work and prevent such tragedies wherever in the world."
Touring Germany
From February 1949, Irène Laure visited Germany in order to propagate her forgiveness and reconciliation message. In 3 months she repeated her excuses almost 200 times in front of regional parliaments, in political and other meetings, on the radio, etc. Each of these declarations remained as costly a the first one, but they reached tens of thousands of Germans. In the years that followed hundreds of German politicians met with their French counterparts in Caux, which created a stepping stone for a wider reconciliation movement. German chancellorKonrad Adenauer declared in 1958 that Irène Laure and her husband Victor are "the couple which did the most over the last 15 years to build unity between the two countries which had been enemies for centuries".
Family life
Irène Guelpa married Victor Laure, a seaman, in 1920, "with as honeymoon the Tours congress", to which they were both delegates. They were almost separated by the congress, Victor Laure being close to Marcel Cachin and at first in favour of the communist majority. But he finally joins SFIO which had been Irène's choice from the onset. They had 5 children. Irène Laure died on 4 July 1987 in La Ciotat.
