The Unknown Hero

On June 24th, 1859, thirty-one-year-old Henri Dunant, from Switzerland, travelled to Italy, intending to discuss his failing business interests with Napoleon III. Instead of tea and cakes with the Emperor, he got the shock of his life. Dunant arrived just in time to see the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino, a nine-hour bloodbath that left tens of thousands dead and wounded. There was little organized medical care. The French army had fewer doctors than vets— horses were more valuable in war than men. Abandoning his plans to meet Napoleon, Dunant set about mobilising local people to help care for the wounded. At his insistence, the volunteers did not discriminate according to the colour of the soldiers’ uniforms; medical care was given to all. From this principle arose the organisation that Dunant helped to found four years later-the International Committee of The Red Cross.

Dunant was an unlikely hero. Born in Geneva, he was a poor student who went on to become an even worse businessman. Even during the early days of the Red Cross, he had to resign from the committee. His businesses were collapsing around him and the authorities had ordered his arrest.

Time and again he found himself fleeing his debts. In the end, he fled Geneva, never to return again. In the next twenty years, he went from country to country; part-fugitive, part-businessman, part-mouthpiece for the Red Cross. He eventually returned to Switzerland. He withdrew from the world, but all this changed in 1895 when an article was written about the International Committee of the Red Cross. Six years later he became the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The citation for the award said, “Without you, the Red Cross, the supreme humanitarian achievement of the nineteenth century, would probably have never been undertaken.” He asked that the prize money be administered from Norway so that none of his creditors could get their hands on it.

From Dunant’s early solo efforts, the organisation has grown steadily over the last 150 years. Today, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement has almost 100 million members, who operate all over the world. Its emblem, the inverse of Switzerland’s national flag, is an international symbol of humanitarian grace.

If his organisation is a giant force for good, Henri Dunant himself is barely remembered. A small museum in Heiden remains infrequently visited (the people of Heiden did not like him much- he refused to speak German), and his name is not universally known. Before he died at the age of eighty-two, he stated that he wished to be buried in Zurich without a ceremony. But fate had the last laugh. In 1944, in the same Heiden hospital where Dunant had died thirty-four years previously, a baby was born. That baby was Jakob Kellenberger, who, in 1988, became president of the International Committee of Red Cross.