Jean Monnet - Marriage

Marriage

In August 1929, during a dinner party in Paris, the 41-year-old Monnet met the 22-year-old Italian painter Silvia Giannini (born in Bondini in 1907). She had recently (6 April 1929) married Francisco Giannini, an employee of Monnet when he was a representative in Italy.

In April 1931, Silvia had a child, Anna. Legally, the father was Francisco Giannini.

Divorce was not allowed in France and many other European countries at that time. In 1934, Silvia and Jean Monnet met in Moscow; he had come from China via the Trans-Siberian, she from Switzerland. He arranged for Silvia to obtain Soviet citizenship; she immediately divorced her husband and married Jean Monnet.

The idea for the Moscow marriage came from Dr. Ludwik Rajchman, whom Monnet met during his time at the League of Nations (Rajchman was connected to the Soviet Ambassador to China, Bogomolov). It seems that the American and French ambassadors in Moscow, William Bullitt and Charles Aiphand, also played a role.

The custody of Anna was a problem; in 1935 Silvia took refuge with Anna in the Soviet consulate in Shanghai, where they were living at the time, because Francisco Giannini was trying to obtain custody of the child. The legal battle continued with a ruling in favour of Silvia in 1937 in New York, but this was not recognized in some other countries. In 1941, they had another child, Marianne. The Monnet family returned to France in 1945.

After the death of Francisco Giannini in 1974, they married canonically in the cathedral of Lourdes.