Jean Giraudoux

Jean Giraudoux was born on 29 October 1882 in Bellac, on the border between the Marche and the Limousin regions. He was the son of Anne Lacoste and Léon Giraudoux, then a road and bridge engineer, who was appointed tax collector in Pellevoisin in 1889. Read more

The young Giraudoux first attended the college in Cérilly, then the public school in Pellevoisin, before being sent in 1893, as a scholarship boarder, to the lycée in Châteauroux, where he completed an excellent secondary education. Always first in every subject and a brilliant student, he prepared at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux for the entrance examination to the École normale supérieure. He placed first, and spent three years refining an elite education that he would later, with great success, turn toward the real world, approaching it through a universal humanism capable of making the most recent events its own.

If Giraudoux was the model normalien during his time on the rue d'Ulm, he did not look forward with any pleasure to becoming a professor. While visiting Germany as a holder of an agrégation scholarship, he found an opportunity in Munich to become tutor to Paul Morand, six years his junior, and a correspondent for *Le Figaro*, thanks to the good offices of the actress Wanda de Boncza. He gave some French lessons to the Prince of Saxe-Meiningen, then travelled through Scandinavia, Austria, Italy and the Balkans as an enthusiastic traveller.