David Davies, 1st Baron Davies

David Davies, 1st Baron Davies (born May 11, 1880 in Llandinam , Montgomeryshire , † June 16, 1944 there ) was a British politician ( Liberal Party ) and patron.

Life and activity

David Davies was the offspring of a wealthy industrial family. His father was Edward Davies. He was at the Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh brought up and educated at King's College of the University of Cambridge , which he left in 1903 with a degree.

On the occasion of the British general election in 1906, Davies was elected as a candidate for the Liberal Party in the constituency of Montgomeryshire as a member of the House of Commons , the British Parliament, of which he was then a member until 1929. In the elections of 1912, 1918, 1922, 1923 and 1924, his mandate was confirmed. When he was raised to the nobility in 1931 as 1st Baron Davies, he was given a seat in the House of Lords . At the end of the First World War , in which he participated as a major in the 7th Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, Davis was appointed private parliamentary secretary to then British Prime Minister David Lloyd George .

Aside from his political activities, Davies made a name for himself as a patron of art and culture and other charitable causes: in 1910 he donated 150,000 pounds for the King Edward VII Welsh National Memorial , an initiative dedicated to the memory of Edward VII , which pursued the goal of Eradicate tuberculosis in Wales. In 1919, in honor of US President Woodrow Wilson, he founded the world's first chair in international politics, which was housed at the University College of Wales in Aberystwyth . Today this facility also houses a David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies.

The failure of the 1933 Geneva Disarmament Conference prompted Davies to found the New Commonwealth Society , which was dedicated to reforming the League of Nations to secure law and order around the world. He was also one of the best-known supporters of the League of Nations in and outside the British Parliament. In line with his pacifist views, Davies et al. a. the gradual transformation of national armies into an international police force.

At the end of the 1930s, the National Socialist police officers classified Davies as an important target: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who the Nazi surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why they should be in the case A successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht should be located and arrested by the occupying troops following special SS commandos with special priority.

Fonts

• The Problem of the Twentieth Century , 1930.

literature

• Kenneth O. Morgan : Davies, David, first Baron Davies (1880–1944) , in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford 2004.
• Graham Jones: David Davies , in: Journal of Liberal History , Issue 29, Winter 2000/2001

predecessor	Office	successor
New title created	Baron Davies 1932-1944	David Davies