Born to a Jewish family, Peiper converted to Catholicism as a young man and spent several years in Spain.

[2] In 1921, in the Second Polish Republic, he founded the Zwrotnica ('Railroad switch') monthly, devoted mostly to avant-garde movements in contemporary poetry.

Although short-lived, the magazine (issued until 1923 and then briefly reactivated between 1926 and 1927), paved the way for young poets of the Awangarda krakowska group, among them Julian Przyboś, Jan Brzękowski and Jalu Kurek.

As an artist, Peiper believed that a writer should resemble a skilled craftsman, able to carefully plan his words.

He coined the "3 x M" slogan Miasto, Masa, Maszyna ('City, Mass, Machine'), one of the memes of Polish poetry of the 1920s.