Henri de Peyerimhoff (19 September 1871 – 21 July 1953) was a French senior civil servant and then a lobbyist for the coal industry and president of several mining companies.
He became bored with this work, resigned and became head of the colliery owner's association, whose interests he defended against other industries, the unions and the government.
He became vice-president of the National Economic Council, and used that position to express his generally conservative views on social and industrial issues.
After the Franco-Prussian War (1870), when Alsace became part of Germany his father chose to stay with France, and became judge of the civil court of Moulins in 1873, and then in Perpignan.
He responded by choosing to study philosophy and law, and went with his brother Paul to the École libre des sciences politiques, from which he graduated in the summer of 1893.
In the spring of 1895 he heard that four places in the Conseil d'État were open for competition, prepared for the examination under Jacques Tardieu of the École libre, and was admitted.
Édouard Laferrière, Vice-President[a] of the Conseil d’Etat, was temporarily appointed Governor General of Algeria at a time when the colony was experiencing a wave of antisemitism and serious financial difficulties.
Laferrière died, and in 1902 the new governor general of Algeria, Paul Révoil, created the position of "director of economic services" for Peyerimhoff, who settled with his wife in Algiers in April 1902.
[2] In 1929 Peyerimhoff was part of a consortium that included François de Wendel and René-Paul Duchemin that paid a high premium to purchase a majority share in Le Temps, hoping to prevent the liberal paper from falling into the wrong hands.
[2] Georges Valois identified Peyerimhoff as a member of an evil band of polytechniciens led by Jean Coutrot who had conspired against democracy, parliamentarianism and syndicalism since 1922 or 1923.
[2] Peyerimhoff had been called "le gentleman du charbon" and a fonctionnaire patronal, but after being dismissed in 1940 he lost his influence in the coal industry.
[2] On behalf of the coal owners Peyerimhoff formally endorsed the corporatist Redressement Français at the closing session in the amphitheatre of the Sorbonne of its National Congress of Metropolitan and Colonial Organization in April 1927.
[10] Peyerimhoff thought that unlike massive German conglomerates such as IG Farben the French model of industrial ententes let the member companies retain their identities and continue to compete to some extent.
[11] Although he was not a follower of Henri de Saint-Simon, Peyerimhoff thought the political structure of France needed basic change because politicians were no longer able to handle the problems of the modern economy.
[2] In 1938 Peyerimhoff and Louis Renault supported Georges Bonnet in opposing an intensive rearmament policy, which they thought would harm the economy.