The Franco-German historian and political scientist Alfred Grosse, a major figure of reconciliation and cooperation between France and Germany, has died at the age of 99, his family announced Thursday to AFP, confirming information from the newspaper Le Monde.

“All those who promoted Franco-German friendship they are now orphans (…) Alfred Grosset was a humanist unifier between our two countries and a deep source of inspiration,” France’s ambassador to Germany Francois Delattre reacted via the X social networking site.

“We are losing one of the greatest. From Frankfurt to Paris, no one has defined our vision of Franco-German reconciliation as much as he has,” wrote Cornelia Voll, president of the Hertie School in Berlin, also to X.

A Europeanist born in Germany but French since 1937, Alfred Grosset, a pillar of Sciences-Po, Paris’s renowned Institute of Political Studies (IEP), and newspaper columnist, was the son of a Jewish pediatrician. His family left Germany in 1933 to take refuge in France, where his father died in 1934 and he studied.

Alfred Grosse was first deputy director of the UNESCO office in Germany and then a professor at the Institute of Political Studies (IEP) in Paris, where he will mainly pursue his career.

Alongside was general secretary of the French Committee for Exchanges with the new Germany and director of the publication “Allemagne” (Germany), president of the Information and Research Center for Contemporary Germany (CIRAC) and political chronicler in the French press, in the newspapers Le Monde (1965-94) and La Croix, as well as in the regional newspaper Ouest-France and the magazine L’Expansion.

He published numerous books, including Foreign Affairs: France’s Policy since 1944, Hitler: The Press and the Birth of a Dictatorship, The Germany of Our Times, The Fifth Republic and its Foreign Policy “, “Atheist look at Christians”, “Joy and Death. Account of a life”, “France, similar and different”.

A father of four and passionate about classical music, he was too president of the Chosen Voices Forums (Forum Voix Étouffées, FVE), which helps rediscover musical victims of Nazism and European totalitarianism of the 20th century.