French physician and political figure noted as an ardent defender of Alsace’s kinship with France during the German period. He was part of the circle of Saint-Léonard. According to Jean Schlumberger he was “the soul of Alsace”.
His father Jean (1829-1905) was an accountant at the Schlumberger factory. His mother Marie-Joséphine, née Vogelweith, died at the age of 27, on 26 July 1872, when he was nearly three years old. His sister was Jeanne Bucher who would create her eponymous gallery in Paris.
He did his higher education in Guebwiller, then in Strasbourg, where he studied medicine. It was there that he came into contact with artists, in particular Alfred Martzolff, Léon Hornecker, Paul Braunagel, Gustave Stoskopf, Joseph Sattler and above all Charles Spindler. This group later took the name Cercle de Saint-Léonard. Pierre Bucher then spent a year in Paris in 1896 and did internships in Germany and Switzerland.
He established himself as a doctor in Strasbourg in 1897 and specialized in nervous and infantile diseases. There he married Amélie Haehl.
In 1901, he took over the management of the Revue alsacienne illustrée created and owned by Charles Spindler, which aimed to publicize Alsatian culture and traditions by highlighting their French roots. In 1912, with Dr. Ferdinand Dollinger, he added to this journal the Cahiers alsaciens, which chronicled the moral and economic life of Alsace, and opposed Germanic culture. With the Dollinger brothers, Ferdinand and Léon, he founded the Alsatian Museum in Strasbourg.
On 30 July 1914 he was warned of his imminent arrest by the German police, and he fled to Switzerland, then joined the French army. All his property was seized by the Germans, and he was sentenced to death for high treason and desertion.
He joined the medical corps, but did not stay there, because the army wanted to use his great knowledge of Alsace. He was thus detached to the General Staff of General Pau, commander of the Army of Alsace. After arriving in Mulhouse, then Rouffach, he was seconded to the intelligence service of Belfort, at the center of Réchésy, at the crossroads of Alsace under French control, Switzerland and the territory of Belfort. He was responsible for obtaining political and military information on Germany, as well as on the state of mind of the Germans on a daily basis by the daily analysis of the German press from the national daily newspapers to the smallest local sheets. For his work at Réchésy he was decorated as an officer of the Legion of Honour.
After the War he refused the post of Mayor of Strasbourg, and was then attached to the General Commissariat of the Republic in Strasbourg. He inaugurated the French University of Strasbourg on 22 November 1919, and he was named Commander of the Legion of Honour. He created l’Alsace française, taking up the concept of the Revue alsacienne illustrée, the first issue appeared on 1 January 1921.
He died in Strasbourg on 15 February 1921 at age 51 following an operation on an old wound contracted during the war.
Link to Wikipedia biography (French)