Maurice Nadeau

Maurice Nadeau (21 May 1911 – 16 June 2013) was a French teacher, writer, literary critic, and editor. He was born in Paris.

He was the father of the actress Claire Nadeau and the film director Gilles Nadeau.

Orphaned during the First World War, Nadeau attended the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, where he discovered politics. In 1930, he joined the French Communist Party, where he worked with Georges Cogniot. He was expelled from the party in 1932. He then read Lenin and Leon Trotsky, which inspired him to join the Ligue Communiste, a Trotskyist party created by Pierre Naville. In this period, he frequently met Louis Aragon, André Gide, André Breton, Jacques Prévert and Benjamin Péret.

Made a teacher of literature in 1936, he taught until 1945, briefly as a teacher of literature in Prades, but he preferred to be a schoolteacher in Thiais in order to move closer to Paris. He then collaborated with André Breton on the review Clé, which protested against the internment in France of Spanish republicans in the early phases of the Spanish Civil War.

After a brief period of mobilization, he returned to teaching during the Nazi occupation and engaged in clandestine political activities. His resistance network (which included a German soldier who would be executed) was dismantled in the course of a raid. David Rousset and several of his other members were deported. Rousset's wife helped Nadeau to escape deportation.