Léon Halévy

Who was Léon Halévy?

Léon Halévy was a French civil servant, historian, and dramatist.

Born to a Jewish family in Paris, Léon was the son of the writer and chazzan Élie Halévy and the younger brother of the composer Jacques François Fromenthal Halévy.

After finishing a course at the Lycée Charlemagne, Halévy became a disciple and collaborator of Saint-Simon, aiding in the foundation of his journal, Le Producteur, and writing the introduction to his work, Opinions Littéraires, Philosophiques et Industrielles, in which Olinde Rodrigues and Étienne-Martin Bailly also assisted. In 1828 he wrote a History of the Jews in Modern Times, one of the earliest works on this topic.

Halévy became baptised in order to marry the daughter of the architect Louis-Hippolyte Lebas and this enabled him in 1831 to become assistant professor of French literature at the Ecole Polytechnique, where there was some discrimination against Jews. However he abandoned the position three years later.