Léon Centner

Léon Centner (born December 16, 1919, near Warsaw, Poland; died June 13, 2002, in Paris, France) was a French resistance fighter, bookseller, bibliophile and publisher. In 1966, Centner co-founded the influential French publishing house Éditions d'histoire sociale internationale (EDHIS) which specialised in republishing significant works of social history and 19th century periodicals.

Biography Léon Centner was born in Warsaw into a Polish Jewish family. His family moved to France in 1923, when he was 4 years old. During the Second World War, he left Paris for Grenoble, where he joined the communist resistance unit MOI. and was an active member of the French Communist Party until his exclusion from the party in 1956. In 1966, he co-founded EDHIS EDHIS reprinted Le Fils du Père Duchêne's Éphémérides du citoyen in ten volumes, in collaboration with Albert Soboul, as well as other hard-to-find 19th century works. EDHIS's publications focused on the social revolutions of the 19th century and the development of the Labour movement, as well as the beginnings of the French Revolution of 1789. EDHIS ceased printing in 1995.

Léon Centner was a member of the Society for Robespierrist Studies for 25 years.