Levaillant, Isaïe

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LEVAILLANT, ISAÏE

LEVAILLANT, ISAÏE (1845–1911), French civil servant and publicist, born in Hegenheim, Alsace. After the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71, Levaillant founded a Republican newspaper in Nevers and filled various administrative posts under Gambetta. In 1885 he was appointed head of the Sureté Générale at the Ministry of the Interior. He was dismissed for his pro-*Dreyfus sympathies and subsequently wrote his own defense, Ma Justification (1895). After this, he devoted himself to combating antisemitism, chiefly through his editorials in L'Univers Israélite, which he edited until 1905. When the separation of Church and State in France (1906) made it necessary to revise the organizational structure of French Jewry, Levaillant drew up the new statute. His writings include La genèse de l'antisémitisme sous la Troisième République (1907).

bibliography:

L'Univers Israélite, 67 (1911/12), 229–39; ai, 72 (1911), 340f., 348.