Fred Zeller

Frederick Victor Zeller, (26 March 1912 -7 February 2003), was a French painter and politician. He was a militant Trotskyist during the years 1930-40, and was elected to lead the Grand Orient de France (GODF) in 1971, a position he held until 1973.

Coming from a relatively wealthy family, very close to artistic circles, he spent his childhood in Melun and his early studies in Jacques Amyot college. At 15, he bought his first great painting box,that came from a painter of the Barbizon School : Armand Cassagne . He then continued at the School of Decorative Arts in the Rue d'Ulm.

He began his socialistic Journey by joining the Socialist Students in 1931, later on the Young Socialists and finally to the SFIO . He soon became a leader of the Socialist Youth, in which he led a trend called "revolutionary socialist youth"that opposed both the reformist wing more, close to the leadership of the SFIO and aware pro-Trotskyist Bolshevik Leninist close group Gérard Rosenthal. In 1935, he created a magazine, Revolution, which he ran with a Trotskyist activist, David Rousset .

Zeller was to his own astonishment excluded from the Secretary General of Young Socialists of the Seine, by the leadership of the SFIO after the Mulhouse Congress 1935.

Seeking political benchmarks, he was persuaded by Jean van Heijenoort to respond to the invitation by Trotsky to join him in Norway, where he was under house arrest. It is this meeting that committed him into joining the Trotskyist movement, within the Internationalist Workers' Party.

On his return to Paris, he participated in the creation of the Revolutionary Socialist Youth (JSR) whose main leader was a then Trotskyist, Yvan

Opposed to the Munich agreement and Nazism, Zeller became part of the resistance from the start of the occupation. After the armistice of June 1940, Zeller united with the Fourth International Committee of Yvan Craipeau and POI. On 30 August 1940 the first underground newspaper of the Occupation, The Truth is released.

After the war, he briefly joins the Internationalist Communist Party, from September 1946 to the end of 1947, before participating in the creation of the Revolutionary Democratic Rally.

He then withdrew progressively from activism to devote himself to painting, painting mainly surrealism and symbolism. In 1948, he retired to Eze, a small village in the French alps, and two years later he created a museum of local history.

In 1953 he received the lodge "Masonic Vanguard" of the Masonic of the Grand Orient of France, Fred Zeller was elected Grand Master of GODF in 1971, a position he held until 1973.He then engaged the main French Masonic obedience on the paths of greater openness to the world. Man of strong convictions, willingly polemicist rebel at heart, he took a firm line, and did not accept compromises.

He had meanwhile returned to political activity, but less intensely. Member of the Socialist Party in 1957, he created the brotherly Study Circle and Socialist Action, led by former Trotskyists, and serves as a bridge between the Grand Orient and the SFIO. He is also, until 1960, close to the current Socialist Nation of Auguste Lecoeur and Pierre Hervé.

He died on 7 February 2003 in Bergerac, aged ninety years.

In 2009, a retrospective exhibition of his paintings was presented to the Centre for Education and Research ENSAM.

In 2012, the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France, Guy Arcizet inaugurates the Paris headquarters of the Masonic a plaque commemorating the work of Fred Zeller. Fred Zeller was "the initiator of the externalization of the work of the Grand Orient of France," said Guy Arcizet on this occasion.