Joseph-Marie de Maistre

Portrait of de Maistre by von Vogelstein, c. 1810
Born	(1753-04-01)1 April 1753 Chambéry, Kingdom of Sardinia, Duchy of Savoy
Died	26 February 1821(1821-02-26) (aged 67) Turin, Kingdom of Sardinia
Era	18th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Conservatism, counter-Enlightenment, ultramontanism, royalism, mysticism
Notable ideas	Providentialism, sacrifice, precursor of sociology
Influenced by Holy Bible, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, Origen, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Bellarmine, Nicolas Malebranche, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Fénelon, Giambattista Vico, Edmund Burke, Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, Louis de Bonald
Influenced Louis de Bonald, Karl Ludwig von Haller, Juan Donoso Cortés, Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, Charles Baudelaire, Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly, Honoré de Balzac, Léon Bloy, Charles Maurras, Paul Claudel, Julius Evola, Carl Schmitt, George Fitzhugh, Orestes Brownson, Francisco Franco, Pat Buchanan

Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre (French pronunciation: [də mɛstʁ]^[1] 1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821) was a French-speaking Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat. He defended hierarchical societies and a monarchical State in the period immediately following the French Revolution. Despite his close ties with France, Maistre was a subject of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, whom he served as member of the Savoy Senate (1787–1792), ambassador to Russia (1803–1817), and minister of state to the court in Turin (1817–1821).^[2]

Maistre, a key figure of the Counter-Enlightenment, saw monarchy both as a divinely sanctioned institution and as the only stable form of government. He called for the restoration of the House of Bourbon to the throne of France and argued that the Pope should have ultimate authority in temporal matters. Maistre also claimed that it was the rationalist rejection of Christianity which was directly responsible for the disorder and bloodshed which followed the French Revolution of 1789.

Biography[link]

Maistre was born in 1753 at Chambéry, in the Duchy of Savoy, which at that time was part of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, ruled by the House of Savoy.^[3] His family was of French origin. His grandfather André Maistre, who came from Provence, had been a draper and councilman in Nice (then under the rule of the House of Savoy), and his father François-Xavier, who moved to Chambéry in 1740, became a magistrate and senator, eventually receiving the title of count from the King of Piedmont-Sardinia. His mother's family, whose surname was Desmotz, were from Rumilly.^[4] Joseph's younger brother, Xavier, who became an army officer, was a popular writer of fiction.^[5][6]

Lithograph of Maistre, from a painting by Pierre Bouillon. He is shown wearing the insignia of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus.

Joseph was probably educated by the Jesuits.^[5] After the Revolution, he became an ardent defender of their Order, increasingly associating the spirit of the Revolution with the Jesuits' traditional enemies, the Jansenists. After completing his training in the law at the University of Turin in 1774, he followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a Senator in 1787.

A member of the progressive Scottish Rite Masonic lodge at Chambéry from 1774 to 1790, Maistre originally favoured political reform in France, supporting the efforts of the magistrates in the Parlements to force King Louis XVI to call a States-General. As a landowner in France, Maistre was eligible to join that body, and there is some evidence that he contemplated that possibility.^[7] He was alarmed, however, by the decision of the States-General to combine clergy, aristocracy, and commoners into a single legislative body, which became the National Constituent Assembly. After the passing of the August Decrees on 4 August 1789 he decisively turned against the course of political events in France.

Maistre fled Chambéry when it was taken by a French revolutionary army in 1792, but unable to find a position in the royal court in Turin, he returned the following year. Deciding that he could not support the French-controlled regime, he departed again, this time for Lausanne, in Switzerland. There he discussed politics and theology at the salon of Madame de Staël, and began his career as a counter-revolutionary writer, with works such as Lettres d'un royaliste savoisien ("Letters from a Savoyard Royalist", 1793), Discours à Mme. la marquise Costa de Beauregard, sur la vie et la mort de son fils ("Discourse to the Marchioness Costa de Beauregard, on the Life and Death of her Son", 1794) and Cinq paradoxes à la Marquise de Nav... ("Five Paradoxes for the Marchioness of Nav...", 1795).^[3]

From Lausanne, Maistre emigrated to Venice, and then Cagliari, where the King of Piedmont-Sardinia was exiled after French armies took Turin in 1798. Maistre's relations with the court at Cagliari were not always easy^[3] and in 1803 he was sent to Saint Petersburg in Russia, as ambassador to Tsar Alexander I. His diplomatic responsibilities were few, and he became a well-loved fixture in aristocratic circles, converting some of his friends to Roman Catholicism, and writing his most influential works on political philosophy.

Maistre's observations on Russian life, contained in his diplomatic memoirs and in his personal correspondence, was one of Tolstoy's sources for his novel War and Peace.^[3] After the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of the House of Savoy's dominion over Piedmont (under the terms of the Congress of Vienna), Maistre returned in 1817 to Turin, and served there as magistrate and minister of state until his death. He died on 26 February 1821 is buried in the Jesuit Church of the Holy Martyrs (Chiesa dei Santi Martiri).

Political and moral philosophy[link]

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In Considérations sur la France ("Considerations on France," 1796), Maistre claimed that France has a divine mission as the principal instrument of good and of evil on Earth. He perceived the Revolution of 1789 to be a Providential event: the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the Ancien Régime, instead of using the influence of French civilization to benefit mankind, had promoted the atheistic doctrines of the eighteenth-century philosophers. The crimes of the Reign of Terror were the logical consequence of Enlightenment thought, and therefore its divinely-decreed punishment.

In his short book Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques et des autres institutions humaines ("Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions and other Human Institutions," 1809), Maistre argued that constitutions are not the product of human reason, but come from God, who slowly brings them to maturity. After the appearance in 1816 of his French translation of Plutarch's treatise On the Delay of Divine Justice in the Punishment of the Guilty, in 1819 Maistre published Du Pape ("On the Pope"), the most complete exposition of his authoritarian conception of politics.

Maistre argued that any attempt to justify government on rational grounds will only lead to unresolvable arguments about the legitimacy and expediency of any existing government. This, in turn, leads to violence and chaos. Maistre therefore argued that the legitimacy of government must be based on compelling non-rational grounds, which its subjects must not be willing or allowed to question. He went on to argue that authority in politics derives from religion and that in Europe this religious authority must ultimately lie with the Pope. This analysis of the legitimacy of political authority foreshadows some of the concerns of sociologists such as Saint-Simon and Comte.^[7] Armenteros claims that his writings influenced Utopian Socialists as well as conservative political thinkers.^[8]

In addition to his voluminous correspondence, Maistre left two posthumous works. Examen de la philosophie de Bacon, ("An Examination of the Philosophy of Bacon," 1836), is a critique of Francis Bacon, whom Maistre considers to be the fountainhead of the destructive Enlightenment thought. Soirées de St. Pétersbourg ("The Saint Petersburg Dialogues", 1821) is a theodicy in the form of a Platonic dialogue, in which he argues that evil exists because of a divine plan, according to which the blood sacrifice of innocents returns men back to God, via the expiation of the sins of the guilty; Maistre saw this is a law of human history, as indubitable as it is mysterious.

Repute and influence[link]

Maistre, together with the Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke, is commonly regarded as one of the founders of European conservatism, but since the 19th century, Maistre's authoritarian, "throne-and-altar" conception of conservatism has declined in influence in comparison with the more liberal conservatism of Burke. Maistre's skills as a writer and polemicist, however, ensure that he continues to be read. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1910 describes his writing style as "strong, lively, picturesque," and his "animation and good humour temper his dogmatic tone. He possesses a wonderful facility in exposition, precision of doctrine, breadth of learning, and dialectical power."^[5] Alphonse de Lamartine, though a political opponent, admired the splendour of his prose:

That brief, nervous, lucid style, stripped of phrases, robust of limb, did not at all recall the softness of the eighteenth century, nor the declamations of the latest French books: it was born and steeped in the breath of the Alps; it was virgin, it was young, it was harsh and savage; it had no human respect, it felt its solitude; it improvised depth and form all at once… That man was new among the enfants du siècle [children of the century].

—Alphonse de Lamartine, Souvenirs et portraits^[9]

Portrait by Swiss painter Félix Vallotton, from La Revue blanche, 1er semestre, 1895.

Émile Faguet described Maistre as "a fierce absolutist, a furious theocrat, an intransigent legitimist, apostle of a monstrous trinity composed of pope, king and hangman, always and everywhere the champion of the hardest, narrowest and most inflexible dogmatism, a dark figure out of the Middle Ages, part learned doctor, part inquisitor, part executioner."^[10]

Isaiah Berlin in his Freedom and Its Betrayal notes that many view his writings as "the last despairing effort of feudalism...to resist the march of progress."^[11] but he claims that Maistre imposes "an official legitimist Catholic framework upon what is really a deeply violent, deeply revolutionary, ultimately Fascist inner passion" which rejects what it sees as the shallow optimism of the Enlightenment.^[12] According to Berlin his fundamental doctrine is that nature is red in tooth and claw^[13] and what really fascinates him is power.^[14]

Amongst those who admired him was the poet Charles Baudelaire, who described himself a disciple of the Savoyard counter-revolutionary, claiming that he had taught him "how to think."^[15] Maistre also influenced the 20th-century monarchist Charles Maurras and the counter-revolutionary political movement Action Française.

See also[link]

• Latin Conservatism

Notes[link]

Works[link]

• Nobilis Ioseph Maistre Camberiensis ad i.u. lauream anno 1772. die 29. Aprilis hora 5. pomeridiana (Turin, 1772) – Joseph de Maistre's decree thesis, kept in the National Library of the University of Turin (link).
• Éloge de Victor-Amédée III (Chambéry, 1775)
• Lettres d'un royaliste savoisien à ses compatriotes (1793)
• Étude sur la souveraineté (1794)
• De l'État de nature, ou Examen d'un écrit de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1795)
• Considérations sur la France (London [Basel], 1796)
• Intorno allo stato del Piemonte rispetto alla carta moneta (Turn, Aosta, Venice, 1797–1799)
• Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques (St Petersborg, 1809)
• Du Pape (Lyon, 1819)
• De l'Église gallicane, édit. Rodolphe de Maistre (Lyon, 1821)
• Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg ou Entretiens sur le gouvernement temporel de la Providence, édit. Rodolphe de Maistre (Paris, 1821)
• Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l'Inquisition espagnole, édit. Rodolphe de Maistre (Paris, 1822)
• Examen de la philosophie de Bacon, édit. Rodolphe de Maistre (Paris, 1836)
• Lettres et opuscules inédits du comte Joseph de Maistre, édit. Rodolphe de Maistre (Paris, 1853)
• Mémoires politiques et correspondance diplomatique, édit. Albert Blanc (Paris, 1858)

Work in English translation[link]

• Memoir on the Union of Savoy and Switzerland (1795).
• Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions (1809, English translation 1847).
• The Pope: Considered in His Relations with the Church, Temporal Sovereignties, Separated Churches and the Cause of Civilization (1817, English translation 1850).
• Letters to a Russian Gentleman on the Spanish Inquisition (1822, English translation 1851)
• Blum, Christopher Olaf (editor and translator), 2004. Critics of the Enlightenment. Wilmington, Delaware : ISI Books.
  • 1798, "Reflections on Protestantism in its Relations to Sovereignty". 133-56.
  • 1819, "On the Pope". 157-96.
• Lively, Jack, 1965. The Works of Joseph de Maistre. Macmillan.

References[link]

• Armenteros, Carolina, The French Idea of History: Joseph de Maistre and his Heirs, 1794-1854 (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2011).
• Armenteros, Carolina and Richard Lebrun, Joseph de Maistre and his European Readers: From Friedrich von Gentz to Isaiah Berlin (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011).
• Armenteros, Carolina and Richard Lebrun, Joseph de Maistre and the Legacy of Enlightenment, SVEC (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 2011).
• Armenteros, Carolina and Richard Lebrun, The New enfant du siècle: Joseph de Maistre as a Writer, in St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture 1 (2010).
• Armenteros, Carolina, "From Human Nature to Normal Humanity: Joseph de Maistre, Rousseau, and the Origins of Moral Statistics," Journal of the History of Ideas, 68, 1 (2007): 107–30.
• Armenteros, Carolina, "Parabolas and the Fate of Nations: Early Conservative Historicism in Joseph de Maistre's De la souveraineté du peuple," History of Political Thought, 28, 2 (2007): 230–52.
• Barthelet, Philippe, Joseph de Maistre: Les Dossiers H (Geneva: L'Age d'homme, 2005).
• Bradley, Owen, A Modern Maistre: The Social and Political Thought of Joseph de Maistre| (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
• Camcastle, Cara, The more moderate side of Joseph de Maistre, Ottawa, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005.
• Croce, Benedetto, Il duca di Serra-Capriola e Giuseppe de Maistre (in Archivio storico per le province napoletane, XLVII, pp. 313–335), 1922.
• Buchanan, Patrick (2007). State of Emergency. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0-312-37436-4. 
• Ghervas, Stella (2008). Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l'Europe de la Sainte-Alliance. Paris: Honoré Champion. ISBN 2-7453-1669-9. 
• Glaudes, Pierre, Joseph de Maistre et les figures de l'histoire: trois essais sur un précurseur du romantisme français, in Cahiers romantiques (1997).
• Lebrun, Richard A. (1988). Joseph de Maistre: An Intellectual Militant. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 0-7735-0645-4. 
• Lombard, Charles (1976). Joseph de Maistre. Boston: Twayne. ISBN 0-8057-6247-7. 
• Fisichella, Domenico, Giusnaturalismo e teoria della sovranità in Joseph de Maistre. Messina-Firenze, 1963. (now in Id. Politica e mutamento sociale. Costantino Marco Editore, Lungro di Cosenza, 2002, pp. 191–243. ISBN 88-85350-97-6.)
• Fisichella, Domenico, Il pensiero politico di Joseph de Maistre. Laterza, Roma-Bari, 1993. ISBN 88-420-4157-2.
• Fisichella, Domenico, Joseph de Maistre, pensatore europeo. Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2005. ISBN 88-420-7598-1.
• Gianturco, Elio, Joseph de Maistre and Giambattista Vico (Italian roots of the Maistre's political culture), New York, Columbia University, 1937.
• Gianturco, Elio, Juridical culture and politico-historical judgement in Joseph de Maistre (in Roman revue n. 27), 1936.
• Lebrun, Richard, Joseph de Maistre's life, thought and influence: selected studies, Ottawa, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001.
• Legittimo, Gianfranco, Sociologi cattolici italiani: De Maistre, Taparelli, Toniolo, Il Quadrato, Roma, 1963.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre". Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. 
• Mandoul, Jean, Un homme d'État italien: Joseph de Maistre et la politique de la Maison de Savoie, Alcan, Paris, 1900.
• Monteton, Charles Philippe Dijon de, Die Entzauberung des Gesellschaftsvertrags. Ein Vergleich der Anti-Sozial-Kontrakts-Theorien von Carl Ludwig von Haller und Joseph Graf de Maistre im Kontext der politischen Ideengeschichte, Frankfurt am Main et al., 2007, 164 S., 2 Abb. ISBN 978-3-631-55538-5.
• Pranchère, Jean-Yves, L'Autorité contre les Lumières: la philosophie de Joseph de Maistre (Geneva: Droz, 2005).
• Pranchère, Jean-Yves, Qu'est-ce que la royauté? Joseph de Maistre (Paris: Vrin, 1992).
• Vermale, François, Notes sur Joseph de Maistre inconnu (Chambéry: Perrin, M. Dardel successeur, 1921).

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Joseph de Maistre

• The Joseph de Maistre Homepage at the University of Cambridge
• Works of Joseph de Maistre in English Translation

Look up de maistre in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The name de Maistre may refer to:

People:

• Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821), Savoyard jurist & political conservative
• Roy De Maistre (1894–1968), Australian artist
• Xavier de Maistre (1763–1852), French military man and writer

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Xavier de Maistre

Xavier de Maistre (10 October 1763^[1] – 12 June 1852) of Savoy (then part of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia), lived largely as a military man, but is known as a French writer. The younger brother of noted philosopher and counter-revolutionary Joseph de Maistre, Xavier was born to an aristocratic family at Chambéry in October 1763. He served when young in the army of Piedmont-Sardinia, and in 1790 wrote his fantasy, Voyage autour de ma chambre ("Voyage Around My Room," published 1794) when he was under arrest in Turin as the consequence of a duel.

Life[link]

Xavier shared the political sympathies of his brother Joseph, and after a French revolutionary army annexed Savoy to France in 1792, he left the service, and eventually took a commission in the Russian army. He served under Alexander Suvorov in his victorious Austro-Russian campaign and accompanied the marshal to Russia in 1796. By then, Suvorov's patron Catherine II of Russia had died, and the new monarch Paul I dismissed the victorious general (partly on account of the massacre of 20,000 Poles after he conquered Warsaw). Xavier de Maistre shared the disgrace of his general, and supported himself for some time in St. Petersburg by miniature painting, particularly landscapes.

In 1803, Joseph de Maistre was appointed as Piedmont-Sardinia's ambassador to the court of Alexander I, Tsar of Russia. On his brother's arrival in St. Petersburg, Xavier de Maistre was introduced to the Minister of the Navy, and was appointed to several posts including director of the Library, and of the Museum of Admiralty. He also joined active service, and was wounded in the Caucasus, attaining the rank of major-general. In 1812 he married a Russian lady, related to the Tsars, Mrs. Zagriatsky. He remained in Russia even after the overthrow of Napoleon and the consequent restoration of the Piedmontese dynasty.

Literary work[link]

Memorial of Joseph and Xavier de Maistre in front of the Castle of Chambéry

His Voyage autour de ma chambre (1794),^[1] a parody set in the tradition of the grand travel narrative, is an autobiographical account of how a young official, imprisoned in his room for six weeks, looks at the furniture, engravings, etc., as if they were scenes from a voyage in a strange land. He praises this voyage because it does not cost anything, for this reason it is strongly recommended to the poor, the infirm, and the lazy. His room is a long square, and the perimeter is thirty-six paces. "When I travel through my room," he writes, "I rarely follow a straight line: I go from the table towards a picture hanging in a corner; from there, I set out obliquely towards the door; but even though, when I begin, it really is my intention to go there, if I happen to meet my armchair en route, I don’t think twice about it, and settle down in it without further ado." Later, proceeding North, he encounters his bed, and in this way he lightheartedly continues his "Voyage". This work is remarkable for its play with the reader's imagination, along the lines of Laurence Sterne, whom Xavier admired. Xavier did not think much of Voyage, but his brother Joseph had it published.

Most of his other works are of modest dimensions; these include

• Le Lépreux de la Cité d'Aoste ("The Leper from Aoste," 1811), a touching humane story in a simple style, involving a dialogue between a leper who reminisces with a soldier about his lost youth and his sequestered life in a tower with a view of the Alps;
• Les Prisonniers du Caucase, ("The Prisoners of the Caucasus," 1825) a powerful sketch of Russian character,
• La Jeune Sibérienne, ("The Young Siberian," 1825), and
• Expédition Nocturne Autour de ma Chambre ("Night Voyage Around My Room," 1825), a sequel to Voyage Autour de ma Chambre.

In 1839, after the publication of a French edition of La Jeune Siebérienne (1825) Maistre went on a long journey to Paris and Savoy. He was surprised to find himself well known in literary circles. Alphonse de Lamartine dedicated a poem to him (Retour, 1826) praising his genius: "the future sons will say [...] it is your heart, which through your mellifluous writings you have passed to us". He met Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, who has left some pleasant reminiscences of him.

For a time, he lived at Naples, but eventually he returned to St. Petersburg and died there in 1852.

Allusions in other works[link]

• The title of de Maistre's book "Voyage Autour de Ma Chambre" is cited in a verse of Carlos Argentino Daneri, a character of Jorge Luis Borges's short story "The Aleph".
• "Voyage Autour de ma Chambre" is mentioned in British author Alain de Botton's book The Art of Travel (2002, ISBN 0-375-42082-7).
• The poem Hai luli from Les Prisonniers du Caucase was set to music by French composer Pauline Viardot.
• Alphonse de Lamartine writes the poem Le Retour when De Maistre returns to Paris.
• Voyage Autour de ma Chambre inspired Portuguese writer Almeida Garrett to write Viagens na Minha Terra (Travels in my Homeland).
• Xavier de Maistre and his Voyage Autour de ma Chambre are said by the character Brás Cubas to be one of his influences in writing his memoirs, in the novel Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas by Brazilian writer Machado de Assis.
• Voyage Autour de ma Chambre is mentioned in D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers: "...She wanted to learn, thinking that if she could read, as Paul said he could read, 'Colomba', or the 'Voyage autour de ma Chambre', the world would have a different face for her and a deepened respect." (Part 2, Chapter 7)

See also[link]

• Xavier de Maistre (French Wikipedia)

References[link]

External links[link]

• This article incorporates material from Xavier de Maistre in the 1911 Encyclopedia
•  "Xavier de Maistre". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. 
• Voyage autour de ma chambre: fulltext (French); this site also has most of his other work.

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (August 2011)

Henry Dunant
Born	Jean Henri Dunant (1828-05-08)May 8, 1828 Geneva, Switzerland
Died	October 30, 1910(1910-10-30) (aged 82) Heiden, Switzerland
Cause of death	Old age
Body discovered	Switzerland
Resting place	Switzerland
Nationality	Swiss, French[1]
Citizenship	Swiss
Occupation	Social activist, Businessman, Writer
Known for	Founder of the Red Cross
Religion	Calvinism (early years) non-religious in later life
Children	1 Daughter
Parents	Jean-Jacques Dunant Antoinette Dunant-Colladon
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize (1901)

Jean Henri Dunant (May 8, 1828 – October 30, 1910), also known as Henry Dunant, was a Swiss businessman and social activist. During a business trip in 1859, he was witness to the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in modern day Italy. He recorded his memories and experiences in the book A Memory of Solferino which inspired the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1863. The 1864 Geneva Convention was based on Dunant's ideas. In 1901 he received the first Nobel Peace Prize together with Frédéric Passy.

Early life and education[link]

Dunant was born in Geneva, Switzerland, the first son of businessman Jean-Jacques Dunant and Antoinette Dunant-Colladon. His family was devoutly Calvinist and had significant influence in Geneva society. His parents stressed the value of social work, and his father was active helping orphans and parolees, while his mother worked with the sick and poor.his dad worked in a prison and a orphanage

Dunant grew up during the period of religious awakening known as the Réveil, and at age 18 he joined the Geneva Society for Alms giving. In the following year, together with friends, he founded the so-called "Thursday Association", a loose band of young men that met to study the Bible and help the poor, and he spent much of his free time engaged in prison visits and social work. On November 30, 1852, he founded the Geneva chapter of the YMCA and three years later he took part in the Paris meeting devoted to the founding of its international organization.

In 1849, at age 21, Dunant was forced to leave the Collège Calvin due to poor grades, and he began an apprenticeship with the money-changing firm Lullin et Sautter. After its successful conclusion, he remained as an employee of the bank.

Algeria[link]

In 1853, Dunant visited Algeria, Tunisia, and Sicily, on assignment with a company devoted to the "colonies of Setif" (Compagnie genevoise des Colonies de Sétif). Despite little experience, he successfully fulfilled the assignment. Inspired by the trip, he wrote his first book with the title An Account of the Regency in Tunis (Notice sur la Régence de Tunis), published in 1858.

In 1856, he created a business to operate in foreign colonies, and, after being granted a land concession by French-occupied Algeria, a corn-growing and trading company called the Financial and Industrial Company of Mons-Djémila Mills (Société financière et industrielle des Moulins des Mons-Djémila). However, the land and water rights were not clearly assigned, and the colonial authorities were not especially cooperative. As a result, Dunant decided to appeal directly to French emperor Napoléon III, who was with his army in Lombardy at the time. France was fighting on the side of Piedmont-Sardinia against Austria, who had occupied much of today's Italy. Napoleon's headquarters were located in the small city of Solferino. Dunant wrote a flattering book full of praise for Napoleon III with the intention to present it to the emperor, and then traveled to Solferino to meet with him personally.

[edit] The Battle of Solferino

Dunant arrived on Solferino on the evening of June 24, 1859, on the same day a battle between the two sides had occurred nearby. Thirty-eight thousand wounded, dying and dead, remained on the battlefield, and there appeared to be little attempt to provide care. Shocked, Dunant himself took the initiative to organize the civilian population, especially the women and girls, to provide assistance to the injured and sick soldiers. They lacked sufficient materials and supplies, and Dunant himself organized the purchase of needed materials and helped erect makeshift hospitals. He convinced the population to service the wounded without regard to their side in the conflict as per the slogan "Tutti fratelli" (All are brothers) coined by the women of nearby city Castiglione delle Stiviere. He also succeeded in gaining the release of Austrian doctors captured by the French.

The Red Cross[link]

After returning to Geneva early in July, Dunant decided to write a book about his experiences, which he titled Un Souvenir de Solferino (A Memory of Solferino). It was published in 1862 in an edition of 1,600 copies and was printed at Dunant's own expense. Within the book, he described the battle, its costs, and the chaotic circumstances afterwards. He also developed the idea that in the future a neutral organization should exist to provide care to wounded soldiers. He distributed the book to many leading political and military figures in Europe.

Drawing of the five founders of the International Committee.

Dunant also began to travel through Europe to promote his ideas. His book was largely positively received, and the President of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare, jurist Gustave Moynier, made the book and its suggestions the topic of the February 9, 1863 meeting of the organization. Dunant's recommendations were examined and positively assessed by the members. They created a five-person Committee to further pursue the possibility of their implementation and made Dunant one of the members. The others were Moynier, the Swiss army general Henri Dufour, and doctors Louis Appia and Théodore Maunoir. Their first meeting on February 17, 1863 is now considered the founding date of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

From early on, Moynier and Dunant had increasing disagreements and conflicts regarding their respective visions and plans. Moynier considered Dunant's idea to establish neutrality protections for care providers implausible and advised Dunant not to insist upon this concept. However, Dunant continued to advocate this position in his travels and conversations with high-ranking political and military figures. This intensified the personal conflict between Moynier, who took a rather pragmatic approach to the project, and Dunant who was the visionary idealist among the five, and led to efforts by Moynier to attack Dunant and his bid for leadership.

In October 1863, 14 states took part in a meeting in Geneva organized by the committee to discuss the improvement of care for wounded soldiers. Dunant himself, however, was only a protocol leader because of Moynier's efforts to diminish his role. A year later on August 22, 1864, a diplomatic conference organized by the Swiss Parliament led to the signing of the First Geneva Convention by 12 states. Dunant, again, was only in charge of organizing accommodation for the attendees.

Forgotten period[link]

Dunant's businesses in Algeria had suffered, partially because of his devotion to his humanistic ideals. In April 1867, the bankruptcy of the financial firm Crédit Genevois led to a scandal involving Dunant. He was forced to declare bankruptcy and was condemned by the Geneva Trade Court on August 17, 1868 for deceptive practices in the bankruptcies. Due to their investments in the firm, his family and many of his friends were also heavily affected by the downfall of the company. The social outcry in Geneva, a city deeply rooted in Calvinist traditions, also led to calls for him to separate himself from the International Committee. On August 25, 1868, he resigned as Secretary and, on September 8, he was fully removed from the Committee. Moynier, who had become President of the Committee in 1864, played a major role in his expulsion.

In February 1868, Dunant's mother died. Later that year he was also expelled from the YMCA. In March 1867, he left his home city Geneva and would not return for the rest of his life. In the following years, Moynier likely used his influence to attempt to ensure that Dunant would not receive assistance and support from his friends. For example, the gold medal prize of Sciences Morales at the Paris World's Fair did not go to Dunant as originally planned but to Moynier, Dufour, and Dunant together so that the prize money would only go to the Committee as a whole. Napoléon III's offer to take over half of Dunant's debts if Dunant's friends would secure the other half was also thwarted by Moynier's efforts.

Dunant moved to Paris, where he lived in meager conditions. However, he continued to pursue his humanitarian ideas and plans. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), he founded the Common Relief Society (Allgemeine Fürsorgegesellschaft) and soon after the Common Alliance for Order and Civilization (Allgemeine Allianz für Ordnung und Zivilisation). He argued for disarmament negotiations and for the erection of an international court to mediate international conflicts. Later he worked for the creation of a world library, an idea which had echoes in future projects such as UNESCO.

In his continued pursuit and advocacy of his ideas, he further neglected his personal situation and income, falling further in debt and being shunned by his acquaintances. Despite being appointed an honorary member of the national Red Cross societies of Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Prussia and Spain, he was nearly forgotten in the official discourse of the Red Cross Movement, even as it was rapidly expanding to new countries. He lived in poverty, moving to various places between 1874 and 1886, including Stuttgart, Rome, Corfu, Basel, and Karlsruhe. In Stuttgart he met the Tübingen University student Rudolf Müller with whom he would have a close friendship. In 1881, together with friends from Stuttgart, he went to the small Swiss resort village Heiden for the first time. In 1887 while living in London, he began to receive some monthly financial support from some distant family members. This enabled him to live a somewhat more secure existence, and he moved to Heiden in July. He spent the rest of his life there, and after April 30, 1892 he lived in a hospital and nursing home led by Dr. Hermann Altherr.

In Heiden, he met the young teacher Wilhelm Sonderegger and his wife Susanna; they encouraged him to record his life experiences. Sonderegger's wife founded a branch of the Red Cross in Heiden and in 1890 Dunant became its honorary president. With Sonderegger, Dunant hoped to further promote his ideas, including publishing a new edition of his book. However, their friendship later was strained by Dunant's unjustified accusations that Sonderegger, with Moynier in Geneva, was somehow conspiring against Dunant. Sonderegger died in 1904 at the age of only forty-two. Despite their strained relationship, Dunant was deeply moved by the unexpected death. Wilhelm and Susanna Sonderegger's admiration for Dunant, felt by both even after Dunant's allegations, was passed on to their children. In 1935, their son René published a compilation of letters from Dunant to his father.

Return to public memory[link]

In September 1895, Georg Baumberger, the chief editor of the St. Gall newspaper Die Ostschweiz, wrote an article about the Red Cross founder, whom he had met and conversed with during a walk in Heiden a month earlier. The article entitled "Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross", appeared in the German Illustrated Magazine Über Land und Meer, and the article was soon reprinted in other publications throughout Europe. The article struck a chord, and he received renewed attention and support. He received the Swiss Binet-Fendt Prize and a note from Pope Leo XIII. Because of support from Russian tsarist widow Maria Feodorovna and other donations, his financial situation improved remarkably.

In 1897, Rudolf Müller, who was now working as a teacher in Stuttgart, wrote a book about the origins of the Red Cross, altering the official history to stress Dunant's role. The book also contained the text of "A memory of Solferino". Dunant began an exchange of correspondence with Bertha von Suttner and wrote numerous articles and writings. He was especially active in writing about women's rights, and in 1897 facilitated the founding of a "Green Cross" women's organization whose only section was briefly active in Brussels.

Nobel Peace Prize[link]

Dunant in 1901

In 1901, Dunant was awarded the first-ever Nobel Peace Prize for his role in founding the International Red Cross Movement and initiating the Geneva Convention. Norwegian military physician Hans Daae, who had received a copy of Müller's book, advocated Dunant's case on the Nobel committee. The award was jointly given to French pacifist Frédéric Passy, founder of the Peace League and active with Dunant in the Alliance for Order and Civilization. The official congratulations which he received from the International Committee finally represented the rehabilitation of Dunant's reputation:

"There is no man who more deserves this honour, for it was you, forty years ago, who set on foot the international organization for the relief of the wounded on the battlefield. Without you, the Red Cross, the supreme humanitarian achievement of the nineteenth century would probably have never been undertaken."

Moynier and the International Committee as a whole had also been nominated for the prize. Although Dunant was supported by a broad spectrum in the selection process, he was still a controversial candidate. Some argued that the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention had made war more attractive and imaginable by eliminating some of its suffering. Therefore Müller, in a letter to the committee, argued that the prize should be divided between Dunant and Passy, who for some time in the debate had been the leading candidate to be the sole recipient of the prize. Müller also suggested that if a prize were to be warranted for Dunant, it should be given immediately because of his advanced age and ill health.

By dividing the prize between Passy, a pacifist, and Dunant, a humanitarian, the Nobel Committee set a precedent for the conditions of the Nobel Peace Prize selection which would have significant consequences in later years. A section of Nobel's will had indicated that the prize should go to an individual who had worked to reduce or eliminate standing armies, or directly to promote peace conferences, which made Passy a natural choice for his peace work. On the other hand, the arguably distinct bestowal for humanitarian effort alone was seen by some as a wide interpretation of Nobel's will. However, another part of Nobel's testament marked the prize for the individual who had best enhanced the "brotherhood of people," which could be interpreted more generally as seeing humanitarian work like Dunant's as connected to peacemaking as well. Many recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize in later years can be assigned to either of these two categories first roughly established by the Nobel committee's decision in 1901.

Hans Daae succeeded in placing Dunant's part of the prize money, 104,000 Swiss Francs, in a Norwegian Bank and preventing access by his creditors. Dunant himself never spent any of the money during his lifetime.

Death and legacy[link]

Grave of Henry Dunant.

Henry Dunant Monument in Wagga Wagga, Australia

Among several other awards in the following years, in 1903 Dunant was given an honorary doctorate by the medical faculty of the University of Heidelberg. He lived in the nursing home in Heiden until his death. In the final years of his life, he suffered from depression and paranoia about pursuit by his creditors and Moynier. There were even days when Dunant insisted that the cook of the nursing home first taste his food before his eyes to protect him against possible poisoning. Although he continued to profess Christian beliefs, in his final years he spurned and attacked Calvinism and organized religion generally.

According to his nurses, the final act of his life was to send a copy of Müller's book to the Italian queen with a personal dedication. He died on October 30, 1910, and his final words were "Where has humanity gone?" He outlived his nemesis Moynier by just two months. Despite the ICRC's congratulations at the bestowal of the Nobel prize, the two rivals never reached a reconciliation.

According to his wishes, he was buried without ceremony in the Sihlfeld Cemetery in Zurich. In his will, he donated funds to secure a "free bed" in the Heiden nursing home always to be available for a poor citizen of the region and deeded some money to friends and charitable organizations in Norway and Switzerland. The remaining funds went to his creditors partially relieving his debt; his inability to fully erase his debts was a major burden to him until his death.

His birthday, May 8, is celebrated as the World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day. The former nursing home in Heiden now houses the Henry Dunant Museum. In Geneva and other places there are numerous streets, squares, and schools named after him. The Henry Dunant Medal, awarded every two years by the standing commission of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is its highest decoration.

His life is represented, with some fictional elements, in the film D'homme à hommes (1948), starring Jean-Louis Barrault, and the period of his life when the Red Cross was founded in the international film coproduction Henry Dunant: Red on the Cross (2006). In 2010 the Takarazuka Revue staged a musical based on his time in Solferino and the founding of the Red Cross entitled ソルフェリーノの夜明け (Dawn at Solferino, or Where has Humanity Gone?).

See also[link]

• International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
• Dunantist

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Henry Dunant

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Henri Dunant

• Founding and early years of the ICRC
• (French) Société Henry Dunant
• (French) Biography of Henry Dunant (original)
• Nobel website biography of Henri Dunant
• Red Cross Movement and Nobel Prizes
• Complete text of "A Memory of Solferino"
• (French) 'Un Souvenir de Solférino' - at Athena