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Auguste Beernaert Biography

Auguste Beernaert

(Ostend, 1829-Lucerne, 1912) Belgian statesman and politician who was awarded the 1909 Nobel Peace Prize together with Paul d'Estournelles de Constant for his work in the Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907, held in The Hague.

Born into a bourgeois Catholic family, he spent his early years in Namur where his father, an official of the new Belgian government, had been posted.In 1846 he entered the University of Leuven to study law and, after obtaining a doctorate in 1851, completed his training at the prestigious universities of Heidelberg, Berlin and Paris.In 1853 he began to practice law in Brussels, first with Hubert Dolez and later in his own office, specialized in Tax Law.

In 1873 he began his political career in the ranks of the Catholic Party as a deputy in the Chamber as Representatives and Minister of Public Works in the government of Jules Malou, a position he held until 1878 and from which he carried out important improvements in the country's infrastructures: canals, railways, roads, as well as in the ports of Ostend and Antwerp; Instead, it was unable to implement the ban on child labor in the mines.

When the Catholic Party returned to power in 1884, Beernaert assumed the portfolio of Agriculture, Industry and Public Works, but was soon appointed Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, positions in which he remained until 1894.During his tenure, the Belgian colony of the Congo was established (1885), which was the reason for his bad relations with Leopold II due to the monarch's dreams of greatness, as well as the social security system (1887) and the construction of fortifications along the along the border with Germany; Furthermore, the use of the Flemish language was protected and encouraged; and in 1893 the electoral system reform was carried out with the extension of suffrage and the reduction of the age to be "eligible".

Elected president of the Lower House (1895), he resumed the legal profession, He chaired the Commission on Museums and the Arts, and became one of the strongest promoters of peaceful understanding among nations through his participation in various institutions: the International Legal Association, which he presided over between 1903 and 1905, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and, on all, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, of which he was its main supporter.

In 1899 he attended the Peace Conference in The Hague, where he directed the work of the Commission for the limitation of arms.In 1902 he arbitrated in a dispute between Mexico and the United States, and in 1907 he again represented his country at the second Hague Conference.After receiving the Nobel Prize, and despite his advanced age, he continued his activity in favor of peace until the moment of his death, which occurred in 1912 due to pneumonia, after having attended the Geneva Conference.

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