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Weiller, Lazare Jean

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

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French manufacturer and author; born at Schlettstadt, Alsace, July 20, 1858; educated at the Lycée Saint-Louis of Paris and at the University of Oxford. Devoting himself to electric metallurgy, he induced the French government to employ the various copper alloys which render the long-distance telephone possible; and in 1883 he was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in recognition of his treatise "Conducteurs Electriques." In 1889 he was the Republican candidate for deputy of the department of the Charente; he defeated the Boulangist Paul Déroulède, but the election went by a slight majority to the Bonapartist candidate. Weiller has been successively a member of the consulting committee of the railways of France, censor of the Bank of France, vice-president of the jury on electricity at the International Exposition at Paris (1900), and member of the superior colonial council.

In 1902 he was sent to the United States on an important diplomatic mission, and on his return published his impressions under the title "Les Grandes Idées d'un Grand Peuple," which ran through more than fifty editions in a few months. He has written also a number of scientific works, which are regarded as classics, notably his "Traité Général des Lignes et Transmissions Electriques"; and he has likewise been a contributor for many years to the "Revue des Deux Mondes." He is an enthusiastic art-collector.

Weiller took an active part in the Dreyfus case, and vainly endeavored, together with his old friend Scheurer-Kestner, to induce his uncle General Gonse, deputy chief-of-staff, to rehabilitate Dreyfus on his own responsibility. Weiller by marriage allied himself to a family of orthodox Catholics.