Maurice Duhamel

Maurice Duhamel (23 February 1884 – 5 February 1940) was the pen-name of Maurice Bourgeaux, a Breton musician, writer and activist who was a leading figure in Breton nationalism and federalist politics in the years before World War II.

The son of a coal merchant, Duhamel was born in Rennes. From youth, he displayed great musical talent, composing his own original works and collecting and arranging traditional Breton songs. He also worked as a journalist for music magazines. Meanwhile, he learned the Breton language and studied Breton literature.

At the age of 19, he reported for a local newspaper on the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, which took place in the premises of his high school in Rennes. Like his father he was a Dreyfusard and a Freemason. However, he left Freemasonry because he was shocked by the Affaire Des Fiches in 1905.

He joined the Breton Regionalist Union (Union Régionaliste Bretonne) and created the piano score for Bro Gozh ma Zadoù, the song chosen by the Union to be the Breton national anthem. In 1912, he resigned from the Union, along with Emile Masson, Camille Le Mercier d'Erm, François Vallée and Loeiz Herrieu, to found the more leftist Breton Regionalist Federation, which, contrary to other Bretonist organisations, survived the First World War, and started a political magazine, Le Réveil breton, in 1920.

In 1926, he met Olier Mordrel and Morvan Marchal. The three men rapidly formed themselves into a steering committee to create the Breton Autonomist Party, which was founded in 1927. He was responsible for establishing links to national French political movements, particularly the French left. He became editor in chief of the party journal Breiz Atao and he gave the party a federalist and leftist orientation. However, his views clashed with the right wing of the party, led by Mordrel, which was drawn to outright separatism and was in sympathy with Nazi ideology.

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