Our Heroines

Their names have gone down in history or faded into oblivion: Jeanne Helbling, Frédérique Brion, Adélaïde Hautval and Louise Weiss. Four Alsatian women with extraordinary destinies, who left their mark on their times by fighting for their emancipation. Julien Lewkowicz and Gaspard Raymond pay tribute to them in a deeply sensitive and moving performance.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Jeanne Helbling was a film star, sought after even by Hollywood. Yet who knows that the actress was born in Thann? Frédérique Brion met Goethe in Sessenheim in 1770, when he was a student there; she became his first love. Psychiatrist Adélaïde Hautval, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps and recognised as Righteous Among the Nations, grew up in Le Hohwald before studying medicine in Strasbourg. As for Louise Weiss, a passionate feminist activist and the “grandmother” of the European Union, her family roots stretch from La Petite-Pierre to Seppois-le-Bas.

Created in response to Des femmes qui nagent (Women Who Swim), a production directed by Emilie Capliez, then co-director of the Comédie de Colmar, this account of four extraordinary lives intertwines with excerpts from Pauline Peyrade’s text, which explores the way cinema portrays women. These previously unpublished passages, resonating with the journeys of these Alsatian heroines, have inspired actors Julien Lewkowicz and Gaspard Raymond to craft this intimate, delicate and understated performance.