Jeanne Parseghian Elected Mayor of Strasbourg

By Asbarez | Tuesday, 30 June 2020

Newly-elected Mayor of Strasbourg Jeanne Parseghian

Newly-elected Mayor of Strasbourg Jeanne Parseghian

Jeanne Parseghian was elected mayor of Strasbourg, France, the European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy reported in a social media post Sunday.

Parseghian, who was running as a candidate for France’s Green Party beat out Alain Fontanel, the first assistant to the outgoing mayor Roland Ries and Catherine Trautmann of the Socialist Party.

Parseghian is the great-granddaughter of military and political figure Sarkis Parseghian and Berjouhi Bardizbanian-Parseghian, one of the three female lawmakers elected to the parliament of the First Republic of Armenia.

Her great-grandfather, Sarkis, had received his education at the University of Geneva, then left for Baku, where he organized the distribution of newspapers and pamphlets to Armenian workers. He was among the first wave of Armenian intellectuals who were killed during the Armenian Genocide.

His wife, educator and writer Berjouhi Bardizbanian, also had studied in Geneva. In 1909, she married Sarkis Parseghian, and after her husband’s death, she moved to Bulgaria and then to Tbilisi, Georgia.

After the proclamation of the First Republic of Armenia, she moved to Yerevan with his only son, Armen, and was elected a member of parliament in July 1919. After the fall of the republic, however, she emigrated from Armenia, lived in Sofia, Bulgaria, for some time, and then settled in Paris. Berjouhi Bardizbanian-Parseghian died in 1940 in Paris.

Strasbourg is the seat of many European institutions, including the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights. It is also the city with the second largest diplomatic presence in France, after Paris.

France held second round of municipal elections on Sunday, which were delayed for more than three months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

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