Éminence grise

As an eminence grise (French: éminence grise ) an influential person is understood that will not or hardly outward appearance. Mostly, these people pull strings in the background, by giving advice and form opinions.

History

The designation goes to the nickname of the Capuchin friar Père Joseph (François Leclerc du Tremblay, 1577-1638 ), confessor and close advisor of Cardinal Richelieu, back. Richelieu had as the title of His Eminence Cardinal ( he also red Eminence was called ), and there Capuchin gray Habit wear was gray eminence with respect to Père Joseph synonymous with a powerful adviser in the background, although Tremblay himself was never referred to as such, Richelieu successor Cardinal Mazarin does.

Examples

Other examples of a gray eminence are

• The German diplomat Friedrich von Holstein (1837-1909)
• Russian lawyer Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonoszew (1827-1907), advisor to Tsar Alexander III.
• The exiled Pole Józef Retinger (1888-1960), who is considered one of the fathers of the European Union
• Karl Rove, a longtime campaign manager and chief adviser of George W. Bush (nicknamed "Bush's Brain" )
• Henry Kissinger, since the early 1960s adviser to several U.S. presidents until today Member influential and international think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Conference
• Zbigniew Brzezinski, longtime adviser to various U.S. governments, led decisive diplomatic assignments in the U.S. foreign policy
• Dan Voiculescu, Romanian media entrepreneur and organizer of the Social Liberal Union ( USL ), which triggered the political crisis in Romania in 2012
• Angka ( German Organization ) was between 1975 and 1979 in Cambodia, the term for the omnipresent mysterious power behind the Cambodian Communist Party and thus the Khmer Rouge and its leader Pol Pot hid.

Joachim Fest called in analogy Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery of the NSDAP and Adolf Hitler's most influential people since 1941, the Brown Eminence.