Eugène Pottier

Eugène Edme Pottier (French: [øʒɛn pɔtje]; 4 October 1816 – 6 November 1887) was a French revolutionary, poet, song-writer, and freemason. He is most known for writing the lyrics of "The Internationale", a left-wing anthem.

Life and work in Paris

Pottier grew up as the son of a packer but later trained as an industrial textile designer, a profession that he celebrated in a poem called The Exposition, about the Paris Exposition of Industrial Design in 1861. He began writing songs already in his teens, inspired by the example of Pierre-Jean de Béranger, whose book he apparently discovered in an armoire. By the time of the French Revolution of 1848 and the brief Second Republic, he was writing and performing political songs in the company of other worker-songwriters or chansonniers as they were known in French. At a time when up to seventy percent of the French population was illiterate, these songs, called chansons sociales or socially critical songs, offered political mobilization as well as entertainment to working people, and were often set to familiar tunes to encourage singing along. His songs of this period include titles such as "Etats généraux du travail" [Estates General of Labor] "Liberté, égalité, fraternité, et gaité" (best translated as "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--and Fun")

After the coup by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who called himself Napoleon III, crushed the Second Republic in favor of the Second Empire, Pottier worked as an industrial designer. The Industrial Exposition of 1861 and the spread of the Second Empire Style benefitted artisans such as Pottier who claimed to be the "owner of the best design studio in Paris" at the time. Pottier's relative prosperity did not deter him from political activity. As censorship was relaxed after 1867, he joined the French affiliate of the International Workingmen's Association, which had been founded by Karl Marx and others in London in 1864 and became informally known as the First International.