Olympe de Gouges was a playwright, political activist, salon intellectual and advocate of human rights. An early abolitionist and feminist, she was initially a keen supporter of the French Revolution, but became disenchanted with the lack of equality extended to women and the more extremist elements such as the Jacobins. As the Revolution progressed, she became more and more vehement in her writings. The Jacobins arrested her allies, the Girondins, imprisoned them, and sent them to the guillotine in October, while her poster Les trois urnes led to her arrest. That piece demanded a plebiscite for a choice among three potential forms of government: unitary republic, federalist government, or constitutional monarchy. She was executed in 1793 for seditious behaviour.
Nicolas Condorcet was a French philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist whose Condorcet method in voting tally selects the candidate who would beat each of the other candidates in a run-off election. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he advocated a liberal economy, free and equal public instruction, constitutionalism, and equal rights for women and people of all races. His ideas and writings were said to embody the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment and rationalism, and remain influential to this day. He died a mysterious death in prison in 1794 after a period of flight from French Revolutionary authorities. Some historians believe that he may have been murdered (perhaps because he was too loved and respected to be executed) or else committed suicide.
Gustave Moynier was a Swiss lawyer and co-founder and longest-serving President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, very active in charitable work during his long life (1826-1910). Differences between pragmatical Moynier and idealistic Dunant developed early over the reach of the organization’s authority and its legal and organizational formation. The key point of dispute was Dunant’s idea to grant neutrality to wounded soldiers and medical staff in order to protect them. Moynier was a determined opponent of this plan, which he did not consider realistic and thought its insistence risked the collapse of the project. He managed to oust Dunant from the organisation and possibly used his influence to make sure that Dunant would not receive any financial assistance from elsewhere when the latter went bankrupt. Moynier was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times, but, unlike Dunant, who was its first recipient in 1901, he never received it. Nor were the two of them ever reconciled.
While the first two are not strictly speaking ‘local’, the buildings at my older son’s schools are named after them, which sparked my curiosity to do a little research on them. They seem to have been strongly influenced by Voltaire, who was a local for over 20 years. Moynier did live in Geneva and even has a manor-house just over the border in France. One of those houses that I regularly drool over…
