Henri La Fontaine

About Henri La Fontaine

Who is it?: Socialist, Senator, and Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Birth Day: April 22, 1854
Birth Place: Belgium, Belgian
Died On: May 14, 1943(1943-05-14) (aged 89)\nBrussels, Belgium
Birth Sign: Taurus
Occupation: lawyer
Known for: Nobel Peace Prize in 1913

Henri La Fontaine Net Worth

Henri La Fontaine was born on April 22, 1854 in Belgium, Belgian, is Socialist, Senator, and Nobel Peace Prize Winner. Henri La Fontaine was a bibliographer, professor of International law and senator in the Belgium legislature who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913. Elected to the Belgium senate as a socialist, Fontaine served in the Belgium senate for over thirty six years. He was the secretary of the senate for thirteen years and a vice-president for fourteen years. Before elected to the senate, Henri was one of the leading jurists of Belgium and served the Senate as its Vice Chairman from 1919 to 1932. Throughout his career, La Fontaine remained concerned with the issues such as labor, education and foreign affairs and his major contributions to these areas include a bill on primary education and labor reform. In addition to this, he was a leading spokesman for women’s right and introduced a bill on compulsory primary education for children, but he was noted, most of all, for his policies on internationalism.
Henri La Fontaine is a member of Political Leaders

💰 Net worth: Under Review

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Biography/Timeline

1854

La Fontaine was born in Brussels on 22 April 1854 and studied law at the Free University of Brussels (now split into the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel). He was admitted to the bar in 1877 and established a reputation as an authority on international law. He and his sister Léonie La Fontaine were early advocates for women's rights and suffrage, founding in 1890 the Belgian League for the Rights of Women. In 1893, he became professor of international law at the Free University of Brussels and two years later was elected to the Belgian Senate as a member of the Socialist Party. He served as vice chairman of the Senate from 1919 to 1932.

1882

La Fontaine took an early interest in the International Peace Bureau, founded in 1882, and was influential in the Bureau's efforts to bring about The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907. He served as President of the Bureau from 1907 until his death in 1943. World War I convinced La Fontaine that the world would establish an international court when peace returned. He proposed a number of possible members, including Joseph Hodges Choate, Elihu Root, Charles william Eliot, and Andrew Dickson White. La Fontaine also promoted the idea of unification of the world's pacifist organizations.

1919

He was a member of the Belgian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and to the League of Nations Assembly (1920–21). In other efforts to foster world peace, he founded the Centre Intellectuel Mondial (later merged into the League of Nations Institute for Intellectual Co-operation) and proposed such organizations as a world school and university, and a world parliament. In 1907, with Paul Otlet, he founded the Union of International Associations. He also is the co-founder of Institut International de Bibliographie (which later became the International Federation for Information and Documentation, FID) along with Paul Otlet. It was in this role that he and Otlet attended the World Congress of Universal Documentation in 1937.

1943

Henri La Fontaine was a freemason, and a member of the lodge Les Amis Philanthropes in Brussels. He died on 14 May 1943 in Brussels.