Charles van de Velde

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Charles van de Velde (exact date unknown, published 1898)

Charles William Meredith van de Velde (born  December 3, 1818 in Leeuwarden , †  March 20, 1898 in Menton , France ) was a sea captain in the Dutch Navy and also as a cartographer and landscape painter in the Dutch East Indies and in the Palestine region and active in the Middle East . He was made a member of the Legion of Honor for cartographic work for the benefit of French seamen . Together with the Geneva doctor Louis Appia , he was active in the German-Danish War in 1864 as a neutral observer for the International Committee of Aid Societies for the Care of the Wound , which has been known as the International Committee of the Red Cross since 1876 . Both became the first Red Cross delegates in history, an event that has been commemorated by a memorial stone on the Düppeler Schanzen in Denmark since 1989 .

Life and professional development

Roads of Padang; Painting by Charles van de Velde, around 1845
View of Jerusalem; Watercolor by Charles van de Velde, 1853
View of Gaza, lithograph, 1856

Charles van de Velde was born in Leeuwarden in 1818 and trained as a naval officer at the Royal Naval Institute of the Netherlands ( Koninklijk Instituut voor de Marine ). He was instructed in drawing there by Petrus Johannes Schotel , one of the most famous Dutch ship painters of the 19th century . From 1839 to 1841 he worked in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies , today's Jakarta in Indonesia , in a commission that dealt with the creation of maps of the region. For health reasons he left military service in 1844 and worked as a painter and cartographer in the following years . His works included a number of landscapes, in particular from the region of Palestine and the Middle East , as well as some maps of Palestine and Jerusalem published in 1858 . In addition, he published several travel reports on his cartographic activities. In 1854 his book "Travels through Syria and Palestine in the years 1851 and 1852" and in 1857 "Le Pays d´Israel" appeared. For his support of French seamen in topographical work in the Cape Colony , he was later accepted into the French Legion of Honor .

At the international conference in Geneva from October 26th to 29th, 1863 , at which the proposals of the Swiss businessman Henry Dunants to help war wounded were discussed, Charles van de Velde was represented as envoy from his home country. At the beginning of 1864, the International Committee of Aid Societies for the Care of the Wound, which had been founded only a year earlier, decided, on the basis of the resolutions of this conference, to send two neutral delegates to observe the clashes in the German-Danish War . Charles van de Velde and the Geneva doctor Louis Appia , himself a member of the International Committee, were selected for this task .

On March 17 of the same year, a Geneva department of the Swiss Red Cross, which was only founded a few years later as a nationwide organization, was founded . In addition to the five members of the International Committee, this department also included Dunants' brother, Charles van de Velde and seven other Geneva citizens. From this association he and Louis Appia received an additional mandate for their mission. The reason for this was that, due to the resolutions of the conference of 1863, your duties as delegates of the International Committee would have been limited to observation and reporting. The authorization by the national aid society of a neutral country, which was granted to them by the Geneva Association, also enabled them, in accordance with the conference resolutions, to provide humanitarian aid to the respective conflicting party.

Memorial stone at the history center Dybbøl Banke at the Düppeler Schanzen in memory of Louis Appia and Charles van de Velde

Louis Appia was sent to the Prussian side, while Charles van de Velde accompanied the Danish troops. His presence in the country initially met with doubts and rejection. Comments appeared in Danish newspapers calling into question the meaning of his work and that of a neutral institution such as the International Committee in view of what Denmark saw as what was obviously unjust aggression. However, Charles van de Velde succeeded in refuting these doubts through his appearance and commitment. On May 8, 1864, shortly before his departure from Denmark, he finally convinced an aid organization that already existed in Denmark to officially declare itself to be the national Red Cross Society of the country and to attend the mission. The Danish Red Cross is the fifth oldest national society in the history of the Red Cross. During the mission, van der Velde wore an armband with the inscription "Red Cross" and they brought some generals and officers closer to the decisions of the first Geneva conference. He wrote a report to the International Committee on his observations and activities during the conflict under the title “Rapport adressé au Comité international par M. le capitaine Van de Velde sur sa mission auprès de l'armée danoise”.

He acted as an official observer during the August conference of the same year at which the first Geneva Convention was adopted. In addition, he was made an honorary member of the newly founded Belgian Red Cross in 1864 together with his compatriot Johan Hendrik Christiaan Basting . He later retired to Brussels , where he mainly devoted himself to painting. In the Franco-Prussian War from 1870 to 1871 he was again active for the Red Cross and headed one of eleven Dutch ambulances that were used on the French side. After the end of the war he lived in various cities in Switzerland and France and died in Menton in 1898 .

Works (selection)

  • Narrative of a Journey through Syria and Palestine in 1851 and 1852. Two volumes. Edinburgh and London 1854; German edition: Journey through Syria and Palestine in the years 1851 and 1852. Leipzig 1855
  • Le Pays d'Israel: Collection de Cent Vues prises d'après Nature dans la Syrie et la Palestine. Paris 1857
  • Memoir to accompany the Map of the Holy Land. Gotha 1858

literature

Web links

Commons : Charles William Meredith van de Velde  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 2 volumes appeared in Edinburgh and London in 1854, the German edition then appeared in Leipzig in 1855
  2. ^ Place of publication Paris
  3. ^ Gerd Stolz, Louis Appia and Charles van der Velde. The first two Red Cross delegates in world history in Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark in 1864: www.natur-undLandeskunde.de/Leseproben/120-2013/Gerd_Stolz.pdf
personal data
SURNAME Velde, Charles van de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Velde, Charles William Meredith van de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch naval officer, cartographer and Red Cross delegate
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Leeuwarden
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1898
Place of death Menton , France