Michel Chiha

Michel Chiha (also Mischal Schiha ; * 1891 in Mekkin (Aley), † December 29, 1954 in Beirut ) was a Lebanese politician, editor, banker and thought leader.

Life

After the school years at a Jesuit high school and studying at the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut, he traveled to Great Britain , where he did an internship in a trading house in Manchester . In 1907 he started working in the bank Pharaon und Chiha , which was founded by his father Anton and his uncle in 1876.

In 1915 he fled to Egypt to escape military service in the Ottoman army . He settled in Cairo and finished his law studies there. With some compatriots like Youssef Saouda, Béchara el-Khoury , Hector Klat, Alphonse Kahla, Gabriel Yared the Elder . Ä., Émile Eddé , Daoud Ammoun, Choucri Cardahi, Alfred Naccache, Béchara Tabbah, Amine Gemayel the Elder prepared together with two other groups in Paris (Chékri Ghanem, Charles Debbas , Georges Samné, Dr Farah, Dr Khoury and Khairalla Khairalla) as well in New York (with the Moukarzel brothers, Elia Abou Madi, Abdel Massih Haddad, Nassib Arida, Mikhaïl Noaimé and Khalil Gibran ) the establishment of a free and independent Lebanon. Eventually he returned to Lebanon in 1918 and took over the management of the bank.

After the proclamation of the Greater Lebanon by the High Commissioner Henri Gourand, Chiha contacted his closest colleague Robert de Caix. In 1925 he was elected as a member of the Lebanese Parliament. He became a member of a thirteen-member commission for drafting the Lebanese constitution. He also dealt with the Lebanese financial system.

In 1937 he and friends bought the newspaper Le Jour (which merged with the newspaper L'Orient to form L'Orient-Le Jour in 1979 ), in which he published his thoughts on society and politics in an editorial until his death. In 1929 he resigned his mandate, but he remained committed to building up the civil service and took part in several conferences on behalf of the government, for example in Paris in 1946 and established Lebanon's diplomatic relations with the Vatican .

His name is strongly associated with modern Lebanon. He is considered to be the author of the Lebanese self-designation as Phoenicians , which the Maronite Christians like to use today. One of his three daughters is married to the politician Pierre Hélou (* 1928).

Today there is a foundation named after Michel Chiha.

Works

• Essais , Beyrouth, Éditions du Trident, 1950.
• Visage et présence du Liban , Beyrouth, Cénacle libanais, 1964.
• Variations sur la Méditerranée , Beyrouth, Fondation Chiha, 1973.
• Palestine , Beyrouth 1966.
• Politique intérieure , Beyrouth 1964.
• Plain-chant, intitulé également “Propos dominicaux” , Beyrouth 1964.
• La maison des champs , Beyrouth 1965.
• Propos d'économie libanaise , Beyrouth 1965.

Web links

• http://www.michelchiha.org/