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General First nameJean
LastnameSchopfer
GenderMale
CountryFrance
Date of birth1868-05-28
Place of birthMorges, Switzerland
Date of death1931-01-09
Place of deathParis, France


About

The following piece was translated and adapted from the original Wikipedia entry on Jean Schopfer in French, which can be found here: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Anet

Jean Schopfer was born in 1868 in Morges, Switzerland, into a French Protestant family which had gone into exile in Switzerland two centuries earlier. He obtained a degree in literature and was also a graduate of the École du Louvre.

Passionate about sport, Jean Schopfer won the men’s singles title at the second edition of the French National Championships in 1892. He was also runner-up in the same event at the same tournament in 1893. He also excelled at cycling and swimming. He later wrote a book about the great French lawn tennis player Suzanne Lenglen (this was published by Simon Kra in 1927).

A great traveller and a linguist, Jean Schopfer spoke Russian, English, a competent German and a little Persian in addition to French. At the beginning of the twentieth century he adopted the pen name ‘Claude Anet’, which was the name of the rival of the young Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the heart of Mme Françoise-Louise de Warens. Jean Schopfer aslo wrote travel books, novels and theatrical works, and was a reporter for the newspapers Le Temps and Le Petit Parisien. In 1917, he reported on the Russian Revolution as the Saint Petersburg correspondent of Le Journal.

Jean Schopfer’s novels included “Ariane” (first published in 1920), about a young Russian girl. This work was adapted for the cinema several times, notably by Billy Wilder in 1957. A year before his death in 1930, Jean Schopfer’s novel “Mayerling” was published. This work was also later adapted for the cinema (in 1936 and 1968).

After retiring from lawn tennis, Jean Schopfer took up golf and also played croquet in later life. He died of generalized sepsis in January 1931 at his home at no. 108 rue du Bac in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. He was buried in the Garches Cemetery in the French capital. Jean Schopfer’s daughter, Madeleine Leïla Schopfer (also known as Leïla Claude-Anet), was one of the France’s best female lawn tennis players of the 1930s.

Media


Archive statistics Career1892 - 1904
Tournament wins3
Matches33
Match wins23


Tournament wins 1894 - Les Championnats de Puteaux (Amateur)
1894 - Divonne-les-Bains (Amateur)
1892 - French National Championships (Open)


Tournaments Le Havre - 1904 French National Championships - 1902 Paris International Championships - 1901 French National Championships - 1899 French International Covered Court Championships - 1896 French National Championships - 1894 Divonne-les-Bains - 1894 Les Championnats de Puteaux - 1894 Essex Championships - 1893 French National Championships - 1893 Divonne-les-Bains - 1893 French National Championships - 1892 Les Championnats de Puteaux - 1892