Christian Lous Lange

Christian Lous Lange

Christian Lous Lange (born September 17, 1869 in Stavanger , † February 14, 1938 in Oslo ) was a Norwegian politician and secretary of the Inter-Parliamentary Union . In 1921 he received the Nobel Peace Prize together with Karl Hjalmar Branting .

biography

Early years and education

Christian Lange was born in Stavanger in 1869 to a wealthy family. After finishing school, he studied linguistics and history in Kristiania, today's Oslo , and then worked as a teacher. In the around 1880 strong social movement for the national and political freedom of Norway from Sweden and the Swedish royal family, he participated as a teacher in the freedom movements and politically campaigned for the introduction of its own right to vote in Norway.

Advisor to the Nobel Prize Commission

In 1899, Lange was one of the organizers of the Conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Kristiania. This organization, which still exists today, was founded the previous year by Sir William Randal Cremer (Nobel Peace Prize 1903) and Frédéric Passy (Nobel Peace Prize 1901) and was intended to enable international exchange between peoples in order to avoid conflicts.

As a result of the conference, Lange was appointed first secretary by the Norwegian Parliament's Nobel Prize Commission, the Storting . In this function, he developed the basis for selecting and awarding the Nobel Peace Prize winners. Until 1904 he was also the only adviser to the committee and formulated the reports on all candidates for the award, which he then submitted to the committee. In 1904 he became chairman of the Nobel Institute and held this post until 1909.

Inter-Parliamentary Union

In 1909, on a trip, Christian Lange met the French diplomat Paul Henri d'Estournelles de Constant (Nobel Peace Prize 1909), who offered him the post of General Secretary of the Inter-Parliamentary Union for International Arbitration in Brussels , which he accepted that same year.

In 1914, Lange moved his office to his apartment in Oslo, forced by the occupation of Belgium by German troops in the First World War, and from here he organized the Union's further activities. At an international pacifist conference in The Hague in April 1915, Lange presented his plans for organizing peace after the war, which were later adopted by the "Central Organization for Lasting Peace". In 1919 he received his doctorate with the first volume of his work " History of Internationalism " at the University of Oslo.

In October 1919 Christian Lande was able to convene the Council of the Interparliamentary Union for the first time since the war, with 10 states sending their representatives to Geneva . The Union's first post-war conference also took place in Geneva in 1921, to which Langes' office was also relocated in 1920. He himself remained Secretary General of the Union until 1923. In 1920 Christian Lange worked as a delegate of Norway at the founding meeting of the League of Nations , where he campaigned massively for disarmament . In 1921 he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his peace work at the Inter-Parliamentary Union together with the Swedish League of Nations delegate Karl Hjalmar Branting.

After he left the Union in 1923, he was a delegate in the general assembly of the League of Nations until his death in 1938.

Works

• "Histoire de la doctrine pacifique et de son influence sur le développement du droit international", dans Recueil des cours (Académie de droit international) , 1926, III, Tome 13 de la Collection, pp. 171-426. Paris, Hachette, 1927.
• Histoire de l'internationalisme I: Jusqu'à la Paix de Westphalie (1648). , Histoire de l'internationalisme II: De la Paix de Westphalie jusqu'au Congrès de Vienne (1815) , (together with August Schou ), Publications de l'Institut Nobel Norvégien, Tomes IV, VII, VIII. Oslo, Aschehoug, 1919 , 1954, 1963. (Volume 3 Histoire de l'internationalisme III: Du Congrès de Vienne jusqu'à la première guerre mondiale (1914) came entirely from Schou)
• Organization centrale pour une paix durable: Exposé des travaux de l'organization. La Haye, Organization centrale pour une paix durable, 1917.
• Parliamentary Government and the Interparliamentary Union , in World Peace Foundation Pamphlet Series, Vol. I, No. 3, Part III. Boston, World Peace Foundation, 1911.
• Russia, the Revolution and the War: An Account of a Visit to Petrograd and Helsingfors in March, 1917 , Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Division of Intercourse and Education, No. 12), 1917.
• Union interparlementaire: Résolutions des conférences et décisions principales du conseil , 2e éd. Bruxelles, Misch & Thron, 1911.

Web links

• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the award ceremony for Christian Lous Lange in 1921