Career
Born Jeanne Louise Rachel Franck, she lived in an internal exile throughout the Second World War. Declared an "honorary Aryan", she was not deported to her death, but neither was she welcome in Vichy or in Paris. Emmanuel Berl, best known for writing some of Philippe Pétain"s early speeches, was a first cousin.
Her second husband, Fernand, Marquis de Brinon, was a Catholic aristocrat who distinguished himself with an early scoop interview with Adolf Hitler, and became one of the architects of French collaboration after France"s catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Nazis in June 1940.
As the war progressed, the couple were distanced partly by Lisette"s inconvenient Jewishness, and also because of Brinon"s long-term affair with his secretary Simone Mittre. Lisette attempted to follow Brinon when the Vichy government fled to exile in the castle of the Sigmaringen enclave following the Allied liberation.
Although she managed to risk death by entering Germany, she never reached the castle. The Marquise de Brinon died in 1982 in a nursing home in the Paris suburb of Montmorency.