The perfume magnate who bought both the far-right leagues and a mass newspaper
In 1928 he launched a daily at ten centimes a copy and drove its circulation toward a million. The paper lost money, which was not the point: it was cheap enough to be read everywhere, and the language grown on its pages became the language of the columns that filled the square in February 1934
A Corsican who built the largest fortune in the European perfume industry of his day. He bought Le Figaro in 1922 and founded the cheap mass daily L'Ami du peuple in 1928, using both as instruments of anticommunist, antisemitic and antiparliamentary agitation. He financed Georges Valois's Faisceau and the early Croix-de-Feu, and in 1933 created and funded Solidarité Française outright. His career is a large part of the answer to the question that hangs over the French leagues of the 1930s: who paid for them. The organisation he had founded was on the Place de la Concorde as a column on 6 February 1934, and he died that July, ruined by a divorce settlement and his debts.
Career Timeline
- 1874–1904Born at Ajaccio in Corsica; starts in perfumery in Paris
- 1905–1920Builds one of the great fortunes of the perfume industry
- 1922Buys Le Figaro
- 1925–1928Finances Valois's Faisceau and the early Croix-de-Feu
- 1928Founds the mass daily L'Ami du peuple
- 1933Creates and funds Solidarité Française
- 1934.07Dies after a divorce settlement and financial ruin