newspaper wrote an exposé of went to Switzerlandnurseformer French prisonersof war and and establisha homefor refugees.As the conflictended,Louise up asmall militaryhospitalinBrittanyfor woundedFrench soldiers Eager to contributethewareffort, Weiss returnedto to set War beganto dominateherthoughts. both the Universities of to join thecivilservice.Sheobtaineddegreesinliteraturefrom completed the and Louiseexcelledin herstudies.In1914shesuccessfully Jeanne supportedherdaughter’s desireto achieveineducation prominent andinfluentialJavalfamilywhichhailedfromAlsace. was a of mixed Protestant-Jewishbackground. Herfather, Paul-Louis Weiss, 1893, the eldest of Louise Weiss wasbornin (Pas-de-Calais, France) on January25, (1893–1983) of European valuesandwomen’s rights Louise Weiss: mining engineer and her mother Jeanne, a Le Radical agrégation their treatment in six children in underthepseudonymLouisLefranc.

Paris and Oxford before the First World –theexamtaken by those wanting

© lifelong supportof Europeanvalues. Parliament nameditsmainbuildingin Strasbourgafterherrecognitionof the inauguralspeechat itsopeningsession.Afterherdeath,European She waselectedto theEuropeanParliament in 1979attheageof86,andmade the ideaof Europeasacounterpointtosuperpowers duringtheColdWar. children from the Nazis and joined the French Resistance. Post-war, she promoted of aSecond World War. Duringthatwar, shehelpedsave thousandsof Jewish being thatgivingwomen thevote would helpprevent theloomingthreat newspapers andthenin herdedicationtothecauseoffemale suffrage;herbelief dedicated her life to working in international affairsfromthe1920suntilherdeathin 1983.Herexperiences The journalistandpoliticianLouiseWeiss wasan influentialvoice in French and an upper middle class family an upper middle class family German prison camps in Lifelong champion descendant of field hospitals during the First World War profoundly affected her. She EU Pioneers the the the the the pursuit of to securing thevote for women. a new organization, she believedcouldhelpturnthe tideagainstwar. Shecreated turned to relinquished herrolewith the useof force to guaranteepeaceandas aresult, she by in the1930s.Thepolicyofappeasementpursued pacifistic tendenciesbeganto waverasHitlerrosepower While shecontinuedto beastrongadvocatefor peace,her the Parisian daily, on international affairs.Shealsobecameacorrespondentfor It soon becameanimportantandrespectedjournal Philouze, theweeklyjournal co-founded, withfellow journalistandpublisherHyacinthe the causesdearto her, suchas peaceandequality. She used herwritingas awayofvoicingopinionsandpromoting as Weiss sawjournalismas ameansto‘make waron war’and the League of women were excluded from politics in women’s rights and especially women’s suffrage, which peace, first through her work on Nations concerned Weiss, who began to Le Petit Parisien La Femme Nouvelle, L’Europe Nouvelle L’Europe Nouvelle , in 1919. France at whichwasdedicated in 1934.Herfocus January 1918. , in January1918. the time, she several support support

EN As war with Germany became inevitable, Weiss – as one of the With her focus now on Europe, Weiss successfully ran for election few journalists to devote significant attention to the Nazi to the European Parliament in 1979, and gave the inaugural persecution of political dissidents and Jews – used her influence speech at the Parliament’s first session at the age of 86. In her to persuade French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet to create speech she called on all Europeans to unite on the basis a government-sponsored refugee committee in December 1938 of common culture and not merely shared economic interests. to help Jews fleeing the Nazis. She also helped to secure French visas for one thousand Jewish refugee children from Germany Louise Weiss remained a member of the European Parliament and Austria after the ‘Kristallnacht’ pogrom, and secured and its oldest member until she died in 1983 at the age of 90. permission for several hundred refugees stranded on board the After her death, the European Parliament named its main building transatlantic liners Saint-Louis and Flandre to settle temporarily in Strasbourg after her in recognition of her lifelong support in France after they had been refused entry into the United States. of European values.

When France fell under Nazi occupation in 1940, life for Weiss and her family became increasingly difficult and dangerous. When her brother narrowly avoided arrest in 1943 on suspicion of aiding the resistance, Louise went into hiding and joined the resistance’s cause, editing the underground newspaper, La Nouvelle République.

After the war, Weiss undertook a period of extensive travel around the globe, which lasted for almost a decade, during which she wrote many articles for prominent French magazines and newspapers on the leading role that the West, and Europe in particular, could take in promoting democratic values around the world. It was this belief that led to her championing Europe as a counterpoint to the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

In 1971, she established the Fondation Louise Weiss to award an annual prize to the person or institution who contributed most to the advancement of the “science of peace”. Among the winners of this award are Vaclav Havel, and Simone Veil. © European Parliament Louise Weiss talks to fellow MEP Pierre Pflimlin in Strasbourg 1981.