Henri La Fontaine Biography Quotes 3 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Henri La Fontaine was born in Brussels in 1854 and came of age in a city where liberal thought, scientific inquiry, and social reform were intensely debated. He studied law in Brussels and entered practice while pursuing broad intellectual interests that ranged from jurisprudence to sociology and the emerging science of documentation. From the outset he combined legal work with public advocacy, convinced that law should be an instrument for social progress and international understanding.

Legal Career and Scholarship
La Fontaine established himself as an international lawyer, writing and speaking on arbitration, the law of nations, and the peaceful settlement of disputes. He taught international law in Brussels, helping to shape a generation of students at a moment when the codification of international norms was gaining momentum. His writings argued that law, backed by institutions and public opinion, could temper power politics. He cultivated relationships with jurists and reformers across Europe and the United States, building networks that later proved essential to organized peace efforts.

Documentation and the Quest for Universal Knowledge
In 1895 La Fontaine, working closely with the visionary Paul Otlet, co-founded the International Institute of Bibliography (Institut International de Bibliographie). The aim was both practical and utopian: to gather, classify, and make accessible the world's knowledge for scholars, citizens, and policymakers. Together they developed the Universal Decimal Classification and assembled the vast Repertoire Bibliographique Universel, a card catalog that sought to map human knowledge across disciplines and languages. His sister, Leonie La Fontaine, an energetic feminist and social reformer, joined this enterprise, building documentation services that supported women's organizations and social researchers. The work anticipated modern information science and reflected La Fontaine's conviction that peace required shared knowledge, transparency, and education.

Parliamentarian and Social Reform
Elected to the Belgian Senate for the labor movement, La Fontaine used parliamentary debates to advance arbitration, democratic schooling, and civil liberties. He worked alongside leading reformers, including Emile Vandervelde in the socialist camp and Paul Hymans among liberal internationalists, seeking practical legislation that aligned domestic progress with international cooperation. His advocacy for women's rights intersected with the activism of Leonie La Fontaine and other Belgian feminists, linking documentation, social policy, and citizenship in a coherent program of reform.

Leader of the Peace Movement
By the turn of the twentieth century La Fontaine had become a central figure in organized pacifism. He was active in the Inter-Parliamentary Union and assumed leadership within the International Peace Bureau in Bern, eventually serving as its president. He worked in concert with prominent pacifists such as Bertha von Suttner and Alfred Fried, promoting arbitration treaties, international conferences, and mechanisms for state responsibility. In Belgium he cooperated with Auguste Beernaert, a former prime minister and fellow Nobel laureate, to anchor peace advocacy in both legal theory and political practice. La Fontaine traveled widely for congresses, corresponded across borders, and linked scholarly documentation to the public campaigns of the peace movement.

Nobel Peace Prize and Vision for World Organization
In 1913 La Fontaine received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his leadership, scholarship, and institution-building. The honor underscored his belief that organized knowledge and organized politics must work together to prevent war. During the First World War he argued that the catastrophe confirmed the need for a permanent international organization and a judicial authority capable of binding arbitration. His book-length proposals, including a program often summarized as a Great Solution, called for a parliamentary element in world affairs, a world court, and systematic access to information so that publics could hold governments to account.

Between the Wars and the Mundaneum's Trials
After 1918 La Fontaine supported the creation of the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice, cooperating with Belgian diplomats such as Paul Hymans while urging stronger legal commitments and fuller public participation. He and Paul Otlet pressed forward with their documentation vision, securing space for the Palais Mondial, later known as the Mundaneum, a physical center in Brussels intended to house collections, exhibits, and services for universal documentation. With backing from cultural officials including Jules Destree, the project expanded during the 1920s, offering bibliographic services to scholars, reformers, and international bodies. Financial constraints and political shifts, however, led to repeated relocations and cutbacks. Even as the collections grew, the institution struggled for stable support, and in the 1930s it faced closures and dispersal, a blow to La Fontaine's hope for a durable world center of knowledge.

Later Years and the Second World War
The rise of authoritarian regimes and the collapse of collective security in the late 1930s tested La Fontaine's lifelong program. He remained committed to legal internationalism, insisting that the failures of enforcement did not invalidate the principles of arbitration and cooperation. In occupied Belgium during the Second World War, he maintained his intellectual stance and organizational links as far as circumstances allowed. He died in Brussels in 1943, a loss deeply felt in the communities of peace activists, jurists, and documentalists he had helped to knit together.

Legacy
Henri La Fontaine's legacy rests on three interlocking pillars. As a lawyer and teacher, he helped institutionalize international law, giving it depth in academic and public life. As a parliamentarian, he linked social reform at home to commitments abroad, working with figures such as Emile Vandervelde and Paul Hymans to align Belgian policy with international norms. As a builder of knowledge institutions, in partnership with Paul Otlet and supported by Leonie La Fontaine, he advanced documentation as a civic infrastructure for peace. The International Peace Bureau he led survived wars and ideological storms, while the ideas embodied in the Universal Decimal Classification and the Mundaneum foreshadowed modern information networks. His belief that durable peace requires both legal machinery and open access to reliable knowledge remains a guiding thread for international cooperation today.

Our collection contains 3 quotes who is written by Henri, under the main topics: Freedom - Peace - Human Rights.