Maurice Pujo
| Maurice Pujo | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
26 January 1872 Lorrez-le-Bocage-Préaux, Seine-et-Marne, France |
| Died | 6 September 1955 (aged 83) |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Known for | Co-founder of Action Française |
Maurice Pujo (26 January 1872 – 6 September 1955) was a French journalist and co-founder of the nationalist and monarchist Action Française movement. He became the leader of the Camelots du Roi, the youth organization of the Action Française which took part in many right-wing demonstrations in the years before World War II (1939–45). After World War II he was imprisoned for collaborationist activity.
Maurice Pujo was born on 26 January 1872. His family was Catholic and royalist. Pujo studied at the lycée in Orléans at the same time as Charles Péguy. When he was eighteen he won a prize for an essay on Spinoza's moral philosophy. He expected to make a career as a literary critic. He launched the journal La Revue jeune, later renamed L’Art et la Vie, which lasted for a few years. He was fluent in German, very interested in German culture and an ardent follower of Wagner. In 1894 he published his first book, Le règne de la grâce, an essay inspired by the philosophy of the German philosopher Novalis that was praised by the Socialist leader Jean Jaurès. He visited Germany as a student in the 1890s. The experience turned him against German influence and made him a French nationalist.
In April 1898, at the height of the Dreyfus affair, the circle of leftist intellectuals to which Pujo belonged became supporters of Alfred Dreyfus. Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois left this group. Late in 1898 Vaugeois, Pujo and a few other nationalists who met at the Café de Flore founded the Comité d'action française (Committee of French Action). Three of this group, Louis Dausset, Gabriel Syveton and Vaugeois, opposed to the League for the Rights of Man and Dreyfus, launched a petition that attacked Émile Zola and what many saw as an internationalist, pacifist left-wing conspiracy. In November 1898 their petition gained signatures in the Parisian schools, and was soon circulated throughout political, intellectual and artistic circles in Paris.
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