Zafar Shayan
Auguste Beernaert was a Belgian statesman, lawyer and a member of the International Arbitral Tribunal in The Hague who won the 1909 Nobel Peace Prize. He was born in 1829 in Ostend, Belgium and died in 1912 in Lucerne, Switzerland. He was homeschooled by his mother and later attended the University of Louvain in 1846. He received his doctoral degree in Law in 1851. Because of the merits he had, he was awarded a traveling fellowship, through which he studied the status of legal education at the universities of Paris, Heidelberg and Berlin for two years. After returning to Belgium, he submitted a report of his findings to the Ministry of Interior, which was later published.
In 1853, he started working as a clerk for a prominent lawyer Hubert Dolez, who was also the former president of Chamber of Representatives. Then Beernaert begun an independent practice. He published essays and articles in legal journals through which he became a famous scholar. In 1873, he became the Minister of Public Works and improved the infrastructure of the country such as railways, streets, canals, and so on.
In 1884, Beernaert was elected as a member of Senate as a member of Catholic Party. Later, he became the head of the government and the minister of finance. During his ten years as prime minister, major work was carried out in various sectors, and reforms were introduced in the social and judicial sectors. In 1894, he returned to his law practice, but still continued to serve in the government as an advisor of minister of state from 1895 to 1900, and later as the president of the Chamber of Representatives.
Beernaert became an active member of the Interparliamentary Union and led several of its conferences and served as the president of it’s council in 1899. Beernaert led the first Commission of the Peace Conference at The Hague in 1899 on arms and limitation, and over the Second Commission on regulation of land war in the conference of 1907. He served as a member of the Permanent Cour of Arbitration and in 1902 represented Mexico in the conflict with the U.S.
In 1909, Beernaert received the Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with French diplomat and internationalist, Paul Henri Benjamin Balluet d'Estournelles de Constant. In 1912, Beernaert attended the Interparliamentary Conference in Geneva and then while returning back to home he was hospitalized and later died in Lucerne, Switzerland. He was buried in Boitsfort, Belgium.
The Nobel Prize: www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1909/beernaert/biographical