In the first
third of the twentieth century, Christian Lous Lange
(September 17, 1869-December 11, 1938) became one of the world's
foremost exponents of the theory and practice of
internationalism. His career from his school days to his death
was closely focused on international affairs.
Lange was born in Stavanger, an old city on Norway's southwestern
coast. His paternal grandfather had been an editor and historian;
his father was an engineer in the armed services. After
graduating from the local schools in 1887, Lange studied history,
French, and English at the University of Oslo, traveled and studied in
France and England, and received the Master of Arts degree from
the University of Oslo in 1893. For some years thereafter he
taught in the secondary schools of Oslo. In 1919 he was granted
the Ph.D. degree by the University of Oslo.
Lange's first official connection with internationalism came in
1899 when he was appointed secretary of the committee on
arrangements for the Conference of the Interparliamentary Union
to be held that year in Oslo. His capacity for organization
having been noted, Lange was the next year appointed secretary to
the Norwegian Parliament's Nobel Committee and to the
nascent Norwegian Nobel Institute. He resigned from this position
in 1909 but served as an adviser to the Institute from then until
1933, and from 1934 until his death as a member of the Committee
itself. Lange was involved in the planning of the Institute's
building, which was opened in 1905, as well as in the founding of
its library the year before. He looked upon the Institute as a
«scientific» institution, a «peace laboratory, a
breeding place of ideas and plans for the improvement and
development of international relations»1.
Lange's association with the Interparliamentary Union,
auspiciously begun in 1899, was continued in 1909 when he was
appointed its secretary-general, holding this office until 1933
when he declined reappointment. The organization which he was
called to administer, still flourishing today, was initiated in
1888 by William Randal Cremer
and Frédéric
Passy, both destined to become Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
Its members are active parliamentarians who form groups within
the structure of national legislative bodies - there are
sixty-eight such groups at present. Broadly stated, its
objectives, then and now, are to promote personal relations among
the world's legislators and to strengthen democratic institutions
throughout the world; its more specific objective is that of
encouraging efforts on behalf of peace and international
intercourse, especially by substituting processes of adjudication
for force in the resolution of international conflicts.
As the first paid, nonparliamentary secretary-general, Lange
administered the affairs of the Interparliamentary Bureau, met
with parliamentary groups in various countries, helped to
formulate the agenda for the annual meetings, edited the official
publications of the Union, raised money (Norway was the first
country to provide an annual subvention to the Union), and kept
the Union in the public eye by lecturing and publishing on his
own account. To this job in which personal diplomacy was a
necessity, Lange brought tact, personal magnetism, and a
character that elicited trust.
Lange supervised the reorganization of the Bureau after it was
moved from Bern to Brussels in 1909, and in 1914, when Germany
overran Belgium, installed the office in his own home in Oslo.
That the Union continued to exist during and after the war when
so many international organizations became casualties is a
tribute to Lange's persistence. Since the Union's funds in
Brussels had been impounded by the Germans and most of the
parliamentary groups were no longer providing contributions,
Lange made ends meet by obtaining loans from the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and by cutting expenses, even carrying on
correspondence in his own hand. The war over, he convened the
Council of the Union in Geneva in 1919, and the Council, in turn,
convened the first postwar conference of the Union in Geneva in
1921. To be close to the League of Nations and its vast array of
international activities, Lange moved the administrative and
editorial headquarters of the Union to Geneva.
Either as private citizen or as governmental representative,
Lange participated in numerous other international activities. In
1907 he was a technical delegate of the Norwegian government to
the second Hague Peace Conference; in 1915 and later he was
active in the work of the Central Organization for a Lasting
Peace, an organization founded by the Dutch; in 1917, at the
invitation of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he
prepared a report, later published both separately and in the
New York Times, on conditions in the warring countries,
especially in Russia; from 1916 to 1929 he was a «special
correspondent» for the Carnegie Endowment.
From the opening of the League of Nations until his death, Lange
was a delegate or an alternate delegate from Norway, always
«a sort of standing adviser». The author of those
words, Oscar J. Falnes, lists some of Lange's official League
duties: in 1920 Lange provided a general orientation for the
Assembly's Committee VI (Disarmament); in 1932 he headed the
Assembly's Committee VI (Political Questions); in 1933 headed the
Advisory Committee which kept the Assembly informed on the
Sino-Japanese situation; in 1936 chaired the Assembly's Committee
III (Arms Reduction); in 1938 served on the Assembly's committee
on armament problems2.
Lange was a liberal in social philosophy, buttressing his
progressive beliefs with sound historical knowledge and wide
acquaintance with contemporary culture. He believed in free
speech, free trade, universal suffrage, the mobility of labor and
the workers' right to organize. An international defender of
democratic doctrine, he pinpointed its special characteristic as
«the subordination of the executive to the
legislature»3. He was an
expert on the complicated subjects of arbitration and control of
armament. He treated the subjects of internationalism and
pacifism theoretically, but, perhaps more habitually,
historically. His book-length history of pacifist doctrine
surveys the subject from antiquity to the period immediately
after World War I. The first volume of his Histoire de
l'internationalisme, published in 1919, initiated a projected
survey from classical times to his own day. Volume II, for which
he had written the early chapters before his death, was completed
and published in 1954 by August Schou, the present director of
the Norwegian Nobel Institute, who himself did the research and
the writing of Volume III, published in 1963. Of Lange's theory
of internationalism defined in the Histoire, as well as in
many of his other publications and speeches, including his Nobel
lecture, Schou has remarked that it «agrees with the
principle that had become the basis of the League of
Nations» and that Lange «made an important contribution
by participating in the work of ideological preparation for the
League»4.
Lange died at the age of sixty-nine on December 11, 1938, one day
after the seventeenth anniversary of his being awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize.
Selected Bibliography
Falnes, Oscar J., «Christian L. Lange and His Work for
Peace», American-Scandinavian Review, 57 (1969)
266-274.
Fett, Harry, «Christian Lange», in Godviljens
menn, pp. 124- 152. Oslo, 1948.
Lange, Christian L., The Conditions of a Lasting Peace: A
Statement of the Work of the Union. Oslo, Interparliamentary
Union, 1917. This work has appeared in French, German, and
Scandinavian editions.
Lange, Christian L., Den europaeiske borgerkrig. Oslo,
Aschehoug, 1915.
Lange, Christian L., «The Future of the Norwegian Nobel
Institute», The Independent, 62 (May 9, 1907)
1060-1064.
Lange, Christian L., «Histoire de la doctrine pacifique et
de son influence sur le développement du droit
international», dans Recueil des cours (Académie
de droit international), 1926, III, Tome 13 de la Collection, pp.
171-426. Paris, Hachette, 1927. Contains a bibliography of
Lange's principal publications up to 1926.
Lange, Christian L., Histoire de l'internationalisme I:
Jusqu'à la Paix de Westphalie (1648). Christian L. Lange
et August Schou, Histoire de l'internationalisme II: De la
Paix de Westphalie jusqu'au Congrès de Vienne (1815).
August Schou, Histoire de l'internationalisme III: Du
Congrès de Vienne jusqu'à la première guerre
mondiale (1914). Publications de l'Institut Nobel
Norvégien, Tomes IV, VII, VIII. Oslo, Aschehoug, 1919, 1954,
1963.
Lange, Christian L., Organisation centrale pour une paix
durable: Exposé des travaux de l'organisation. La Haye,
Organisation centrale pour une paix durable, 1917.
Lange, Christian L., «Parliamentary Government and the
Interparliamentary Union», in World Peace Foundation
Pamphlet Series, Vol. I, No. 3, Part III. Boston, World Peace
Foundation, 1911. Originally a paper read at the First Universal
Races Congress, London, July 26-29, 1911, entitled
«Tendencies towards Parliamentary Rules».
Lange, Christian L., Russia, the Revolution and the War: An
Account of a Visit to Petrograd and Helsingfors in March,
1917. Washington, D. C., Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (Division of Intercourse and Education, No. 12),
1917.
Lange, Christian L., Union interparlementaire:
Résolutions des conférences et décisions
principales du conseil, 2e éd. Bruxelles, Misch &
Thron, 1911.
Norsk biografisk leksikon.
Obituary, New York Times (December 12, 1938).
1. Christian
L. Lange, «The Future of the Norwegian Nobel
Institute», p. 1063.
2. Falnes, «Christian L.
Lange and His Work for Peace», p. 272.
3. Lange, «Parliamentary
Government and the Interparliamentary Union», p. 3.
4. August Schou, «The Peace
Prize», in Nobel: The Man and His Prizes (Amsterdam:
Elsevier, 1962), p. 565.
From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1901-1925, Editor Frederick W. Haberman, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1921
Christian Lange
