1. Alphonse Adolphe Merrheim was a French copper smith and trade union leader.
18 Facts About Alphonse Merrheim
1. 2.
Alphonse Adolphe Merrheim was born on 7 May 1871 in La Madeleine, Nord, a suburb of Lille.
3.
Alphonse Merrheim became a coppersmith, and adopted revolutionary syndicalist views.
4.
Alphonse Merrheim arrived in Paris in 1904, and soon after met Pierre Monatte at the office of Pages Libres.
5.
Bourchet resigned abruptly, and Merrheim was persuaded to take on the leadership.
6.
Alphonse Merrheim became secretary of the Federation des Metaux in 1905.
7.
Alphonse Merrheim was immediately thrown into dealing with strikes at Cluses, Hennebont and Meurthe-et-Moselle.
8.
Alphonse Merrheim discovered the power of the employers and the need to strengthen the labor unions and to coordinate the different trades.
9.
Alphonse Merrheim was pragmatic, impatient with theoretical debates, and saw the need to understand the realities of the capitalist system and to understand what the employers were doing.
10.
Alphonse Merrheim was one of the architects of the Charter of Amiens.
11.
In 1908 Alphonse Merrheim attended a Congress in Marseille where he compared the present situation to that of 1870, when the result of the Franco-Prussian War was to destroy the first Workers' International.
12.
In 1914, Alphonse Merrheim belonged to the internationalist core of La Vie ouvriere led by Pierre Monatte and Alfred Rosmer.
13.
Alphonse Merrheim became the leader of a small group of anti-war unionists in Paris, at first based at the Vie Ouvriere offices at 96, quai Jemmapes.
14.
Alphonse Merrheim said he had not come to create a Third International, and did not even know if he would be able to say what had been discussed in Zimmerwald.
15.
Alphonse Merrheim just wanted to make an appeal to the proletariat of all countries to unite in action against the war.
16.
Bourderon and Alphonse Merrheim arranged for 10,000 copies of a pamphlet to be published by the Federation of metalworkers, and another pamphlet with 4,500 copies was issued by Alfred Rossmer.
17.
In 1918, Alphonse Merrheim became a supporter of Leon Jouhaux against the revolutionaries.
18.
Alphonse Merrheim ended up on the right wing of the CGT.