André Spire

The French poet and Zionist activist André Spire was born into a well-to-do industrial family in Nancy. He studied both literature and law. A high-ranking civil servant in Paris when The Dreyfus Affair broke out, he was wounded during a duel with the antisemitic journalist Édouard Drumont (1844–1917). Along with his role in the Dreyfus Affair, it was the discovery of the Jewish working class, especially in London’s East End, that converted him into a passionate champion of Zionism and advocate for a Jewish cultural renaissance. He retired from the civil service and from public life more generally in 1926 and henceforth devoted himself almost exclusively to literary activities, publishing multiple volumes of both poetry and prose. When the Germans conquered France, Spire took refuge in New York, returning to Paris at the end of the war.