Gilbert Grandval

Gilbert Grandval (born Gilbert Hirsch, subsequently Gilbert Hirsch-Ollendorff; 12 February 1904 – 29 November 1981) was a French Resistance activist who went on to become the military governor of the Saarland in 1945. He remained in post for a decade, although the nature of the job evolved and there were changes of title in 1948 and again in 1952 when he became, formally, the French ambassador to the Saarland. Subsequently, he became a government minister during the early years of the Fifth Republic. Gilbert Grandval was the alias Hirsch-Ollendorff used from approximately 1943 while working with the Resistance. Subsequently, he was authorized permanently to substitute the Grandval name for the family name with which he had been born, both on his own account and on behalf of his father. The authorization came from a decree signed on 25 February 1946 by the President of the postwar provisional government, and officially transcribed at the appropriate town hall on 12 March 1948. Yves Gilbert Edmond Hirsch was born at his parents' home along the Rue La Boétie in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. Edmond Hirsch (1873-), his father, was a book dealer who expanded the family business to include a publisher of school books. Gilbert's grandfather, Henri Hirsch (1829-) had also been a book dealer. The Hirsch family traced their origins back to Strasbourg, but after the frontier changes of 1871 they were given and took up the option of retaining French citizenship, which meant leaving Alsace. His mother, born Jeanne Ollendorff (1880-), was the daughter of Paul Ollendorff (1851-1920), another book dealer, and a publisher who numbered Guy de Maupassant among his authors. It may have been on account of the name recognition than the Ollendorff family enjoyed that while he was still a child the family took to using the family name Hirsch-Ollendorff. Gilbert Hirsch-Ollendorff was born into a Jewish family but with the post-revolutionary French state deeply committed to "Laïcité" he seems to have been able to carry his religion lightly: at some stage he converted to Roman Catholicism.