First woman in office
Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has died
Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State under Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001
© Alex Wong / AFP
She was the first woman to become US Secretary of State: Madeleine Albright held the office from 1997 to 2001 under US President Bill Clinton. She has now died at the age of 84.
Madeleine Albright played a key role in shaping the foreign policy of the United States after the collapse of the Eastern bloc: as Ambassador to the United Nations and then as the first Secretary of State, she campaigned resolutely, eloquently and principledly for America’s interests. Originally from Eastern Europe, the Democrat became a leading voice in US foreign policy in the 20th century under then-President Bill Clinton. After leaving government, Albright wrote several successful books, among other things. She died on Wednesday at the age of 84 from cancer, her family said on Twitter.
Even after her time in active politics, Albright made no secret of her worldview. US President Donald Trump, for example, accused her of dividing the country and damaging democracy. “He is the most undemocratic president in modern US history,” Albright said around 2018. Trump’s disdain for the media and institutional structures endangers the stability of the country. “We have to do something about this,” warned the then 81-year-old at a panel discussion on her book “Fascism. A Warning.” Democracy should not be taken for granted, she warned. “I worry – more every day.”
As UN ambassador in New York from 1993, Albright tried to get the USA to play a leading role in resolving crises that broke out after the end of the East-West conflict. However, the trouble spots of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia also showed the limits of US foreign policy. Experts praised Albright, for example, for her hard line on Iraq and the military junta in Haiti.
Madeleine Albright and her work in Eastern Europe
Critics sometimes called Albright’s appearance at the UN undiplomatic. But she saw it more as praise for her resolute advocacy of American interests. Then, in 1996, she played a key role in efforts to bar UN Secretary-General Butros Butros-Ghali from a second term. The United States accused him of a lack of will to reform. Albright ultimately pushed through the US will against strong resistance from the international community.
In Clinton’s second term, beginning in 1997, Albright became the first woman to serve as the State Department, making her the highest-ranking woman in a US government office. Born in Prague in 1937, the diplomat campaigned emphatically for NATO’s eastward expansion. “Madam Secretary” also made a targeted effort to maintain relations with allies. She is said to have had a very good relationship with the then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
She also relied on this when efforts to reach an agreement in the Kosovo conflict with the then Serb President Slobodan Milosevic failed. She successfully campaigned for NATO airstrikes in the former Yugoslavia. Albright also dabbled in foreign policy big planks, including better relations with Russia and peace in the Middle East, but didn’t have great results. Albright remained secretary of state until the end of Clinton’s second term in January 2001.
“I had no idea I came from a Jewish family”
Albright’s reappraisal of the history of her family, which the politician had known nothing about for decades, also attracted attention. She was born Marie Jana (known as Madlenka) Korbelova on May 15, 1937 in Prague, the eldest of three children in a Jewish family of diplomats. After German troops invaded, the family emigrated to England, where Albright, unaware of her Jewish origins, was raised as a Catholic.
Her father Joseph Korbel served Czechoslovakia as a diplomat after World War II. After the communists took power in Prague, the family applied for asylum in the USA in 1948 and emigrated. It was not until 1996 that Albright found out about her Jewish descent and the death of relatives, including three of her grandparents, in Nazi concentration camps. “I had no idea that I came from a Jewish family, let alone that more than 20 relatives of mine were not involved in the Holocaust survived,” she wrote in the book Winter in Prague: Memoirs of My Wartime Childhood.
The political scientist married her college friend Joseph Albright, the heir to a media company, in 1959. With him she had three daughters, after 23 years of marriage the Albrights divorced. Albright only began her political career in 1975 when her children were older. First she worked for a senator, then in the White House as a staff member of the National Security Council. From 1982 she taught at the renowned Georgetown University in Washington and advised various democratic candidates – including Clinton, who immediately brought her on board after his election victory at the end of 1992.
Even after leaving government in 2001 and returning to Georgetown University as a professor, Albright did not retire from politics. She founded a global consulting firm that also counted Joschka Fischer among its experts. In addition, she repeatedly spoke out with biting criticism of foreign policy, such as the Iraq war instigated by President George W. Bush. Prior to the 2008 presidential election, Albright initially backed Democrat Hillary Clinton, but then backed the victorious Barack Obama. In 2012 she was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.