LEHMANN, LEONCE:

By: Isidore Singer, Jacques Kahn

French lawyer; born at Augsburg, Bavaria, Feb. 24, 1836; died in Paris Dec. 27, 1892. He was educated in the latter city, where he studied law, and in 1856 became private secretary to Dr. Spitzer, Turkish minister to Naples, holding this position until the fall of the kingdom of Naples in 1860. There he translated the "Tuenzio Mamiani" under the title "Un Nouveau Droit Européen," and on his return to France in 1861 received his doctorate in law, presenting the thesis "La Condition Civile des Etrangers en France." He was admitted to the Paris bar, and subsequently practised law before the Court of Appeals.

At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, Lehmann was appointed by Adolphe Crémieux, then minister of justice, secretary-general of this department, but on the resignation of his chief he returned to the Court of Appeals, where he practised successfully for over twenty years. He was repeatedly elected a member of the governing board of the Society of Advocates, while his activity in the interests of Judaism was evinced by the fact that he was a member of the Central Consistory after 1873, and of the committee on the Jewish Seminary and of the Ecole de Travail. In addition he was for twenty-four years one of the central committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, of which he was at first treasurer and later secretary. In 1869 Lehmann and Narcisse Leven traveled in Russia to study means for the alleviation of the sufferers by the famine there. He was decorated with the Turkish Order of the Medjidie, and in 1880 was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor.

S. J. Ka.