Dunant - Return To Public Memory

Return To Public Memory

In September 1895, Georg Baumberger, the chief editor of the St. Gall newspaper Die Ostschweiz, wrote an article about the Red Cross founder, whom he had met and conversed with during a walk in Heiden a month earlier. The article entitled "Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross", appeared in the German Illustrated Magazine Über Land und Meer, and the article was soon reprinted in other publications throughout Europe. The article struck a chord, and he received renewed attention and support. He received the Swiss Binet-Fendt Prize and a note from Pope Leo XIII. Because of support from Russian tsarist widow Maria Feodorovna and other donations, his financial situation improved remarkably.

In 1897, Rudolf Müller, who was now working as a teacher in Stuttgart, wrote a book about the origins of the Red Cross, altering the official history to stress Dunant's role. The book also contained the text of A Memory of Solferino. Dunant began an exchange of correspondence with Bertha von Suttner and wrote numerous articles and writings. He was especially active in writing about women's rights, and in 1897 facilitated the founding of a "Green Cross" women's organization whose only section was briefly active in Brussels.

Read more about this topic:  Dunant

Famous quotes containing the words return to, return, public and/or memory:

    Return to her? and fifty men dismissed?
    No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose
    To wage against the enmity o’ th’ air,
    To be a comrade with the wolf and owl—
    Necessity’s sharp pinch.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    Then came the Lord Chamberlain with his white staff,
    And all the people began to laugh;
    And then the Queen began to speak,
    ‘You’re welcome home, Sir Francis Drake.’
    —Unknown. Upon Sir Francis Drake’s Return from His Voyage about the World, and the Queen’s Meeting Him (l. 5–8)

    He was the product of an English public school and university. He was, moreover, a modern product of those seats of athletic exercise. He had little education and highly developed muscles—that is to say, he was no scholar, but essentially a gentleman.
    H. Seton Merriman (1862–1903)

    We find that even the parents who justify spanking to themselves are defensive and embarrassed about it....I suspect that deep in the memory of every parent are the feelings that had attended his own childhood spankings, the feelings of humiliation, of helplessness, of submission through fear. The parent who finds himself spanking his own child cannot dispel the ghosts of his own childhood.
    Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)