Irène Laure

She became known from 1947 onwards as she led a campaign of several months duration through Germany to ask for forgiveness and to foster French-German reconciliation.

Irène Guelpa was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 18 September 1898 to a public works contractor's family.

Irène's political and social conscience was awakened by her observation of the hard life of her father's workers.

Her particular part of the march walked 17 km from Aubagne to the préfecture in Marseille, 4,000 women demanding larger bread and food allowances.

Like the creators of Caux, she was 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.

After Laure spent most of the meeting discharging all of 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 failed attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944.

In three months she repeated her excuses almost 200 times in front of regional parliaments, in political and other meetings, on the radio, etc.

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.

The German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, declared in 1958 that Laure and her husband Victor were "the couple which did the most over the last 15 years to build unity between the two countries which had been enemies for centuries".