Lucien Herr

Lucien Herr (17 January 1864 – 18 May 1926) was a French intellectual, librarian at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and mentor to a number of well-known socialist politicians and writers, including Jean Jaurès and Charles Péguy.

On the occasion of the Dreyfus affair, Herr dealt with the "anti-Dreyfusard" Maurice Barrès in La Revue blanche of February 15, 1898; since his family had decided to emigrate to France after Alsace-Lorraine was annexed to the German Reich, he also claimed for himself to be "an uprooted one".

Herr also brought together the intellectual "Dreyfusards" Émile Zola, Georges Clemenceau, Jean Jaurès, Bernard Lazare, Auguste Scheurer-Kestner and Charles Péguy.

He organized a petition in favor of Captain Dreyfus, published in le Temps on January 15, 1898, and was one of the founders of the League for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights in 1898, of which he was a member until his death.

In 1904 , he co-founded the daily newspaper l'Humanité, whose title he chose, and favored by his intense militant work within the "Socialist Unity Group" which ended in April 1905 at the Globe Congress and the creation of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO).