Rafael Altamira

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Rafael Altamira y Crevea [ rafaˈel altaˈmiɾa i kɾeˈβe.a ] (born  February 10, 1866 in Alicante , †  June 1, 1951 in Mexico City ) was a Spanish lawyer and historian . He worked as a professor of legal history at the universities of Oviedo , Madrid and Mexico City, and was a judge at the Permanent International Court of Justice from 1921 to 1946 .

Life

Rafael Altamira was born in Alicante in 1866 and studied in Valencia from 1882 . Five years later, he graduated from the University of Madrid with a doctorate . In 1895 he founded the first literary and cultural magazine of its kind in Spain under the title "Revista Critica de Historia y Literatura Españolas, Portuguesas y Hispanoamericanas" . From 1897 he worked as a professor of legal history at the University of Oviedo and from 1914 at the University of Madrid.

From 1921 to 1946 he was a judge at the Permanent International Court of Justice . In addition to the Italian Dionisio Anzilotti and the Cuban Antonio Sánchez de Bustamante y Sirvén , he was one of the three judges who belonged to the court from its establishment to its dissolution. Even before the establishment of the Court of Justice, he was a member of the commission that drafted its statute.

With the beginning of the Spanish Civil War he went into exile , first to The Hague in the Netherlands , later to Bayonne in France and in 1945 to Mexico , where he was appointed professor of legal history at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in the same year . He died in Mexico City in 1951 .

Scientific work

In his writings, Rafael Altamira emphasized the importance of cultural history in historiography and tried to establish an internationalist and humanistically shaped understanding of history. His most outstanding works included the “Historia de España y de la Civilización Española”, published in four volumes between 1900 and 1911, on the history of Spain and the “Historia del Derecho Español” published in 1903 on the history of Spanish law.

Awards

Rafael Altamira was from 1909 a corresponding and from 1911 a full member of the Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas and from 1922 a member of the Real Academia de la Historia . In 1933 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In addition, he was accepted into the Institut de Droit international in 1927 and was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize between 1908 and 1951 .

Works (selection)

  • Historia de España y de la Civilización Española. Four volumes. Barcelona 1900-1911
  • Historia del Derecho Español. Madrid 1903
  • España en America. Valencia 1908
  • Manual de Historia de España. Madrid 1934
  • Tierras y Hombres de Asturias. Mexico City 1949

literature

  • Altamira y Crevea, Rafael. In: The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography. An International Reference Work. McGraw-Hill, New York 1973, Volume 1, pp. 149/150
  • Rafael Diego Fernández: Don Rafael Altamira y Crevea y la Historia del Derecho en México. In: Memoria del IV Congreso de Historia del Derecho Mexicano. Two volumes. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México / Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, Méxiko-Stadt 1988, Volume 1, pp. 245-262

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Altamira, Rafael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Altamira y Crevea, Rafael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish lawyer and historian and judge at the Permanent International Court of Justice
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Alicante
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1951
Place of death Mexico city