A DYING MAN’S WISH by
BRIAN CAVE
PREFACE This book aims to highlight the struggles that a man can face and how he resolves and triumphs over these issues. It is a story of loneliness, greed and mistrust but it is also the story of triumph, resourcefulness and hope. These are all the traits of humanity in one small book. The Nobel Awards are recognised all around the globe yet little is known about the origins of this prestigious honour. Alfred Nobel was a remarkable man in an exciting time in history. The story of his career is not the aim of this book but the astonishing story that unfolded once this mercurial Swedish inventor died.
THE WILL SOHLMAN OBSTACLES ENDEAVOUR FORMATION
PARIS PARIS PARIS PARIS PARIS
S S S S S
ᰠ䐀爀⸀ 䄀氀昀爀攀搀 一漀戀攀氀Ⰰ 眀栀漀 戀攀挀愀洀攀 爀椀挀栀 戀礀 昀椀渀搀椀渀最 眀愀礀猀 琀漀 欀椀氀氀 洀漀爀攀 瀀攀漀瀀氀攀 昀愀猀琀攀爀 琀栀愀渀 攀瘀攀爀 戀攀昀漀爀攀Ⰰ 琀栀 搀椀攀搀 礀攀猀琀攀爀搀愀礀⸀ᴠ
1888 T
he only problem with this obituary is that Alfred Nobel was not dead and was very much alive. The French press had mistakenly published his obituary and not that of his brother,
Ludwig who had passed away on the 12th of April in Cannes ,1888. Shocked and horrified, Alfred Nobel sat, reading his own obituary which was not a favourable piece of journalism. The paper described him as the “merchant of Death” and the “man who made it possible to kill more people more quickly than anyone else who ever lived.” Alfred was devastated by how the world viewed him. So it was this mishap that was the catalyst for a series of events that would result in the establishment of one of the worlds most prestigious awards today.
C
hemist, inventor, engineer, entrepreneur, business man, author and pacifist. Alfred Nobel was a talented and complex individual. He was known worldwide
and was extremely wealthy yet often he would feel lonely and without friends. He spent long hours in the laboratory working with toxic chemicals under primitive conditions. In addition to the laboratory work, Nobel dealt with his correspondence with factories, banks and collaborators all by himself. He traveled frequently and did not have a permanent home. Nobel’s complex personality puzzled his contemporaries. Although his business interests required him to travel almost constantly, he remained a lonely recluse who was prone to fits of depression.
H
e led a retired and simple life and was a man of ascetic habits, yet he could be a courteous dinner host, a good listener, and a man of incisive wit. He
never married, and apparently preferred the joys of inventing to those of romantic attachment. He had an abiding interest in literature and wrote plays, novels, and poems, almost all of which remained unpublished. He had amazing energy and found it difficult to relax after intense bouts of work. Among his contemporaries, he had the reputation of a liberal or even a socialist. Though Nobel was essentially a pacifist and hoped that the destructive powers of his inventions would help bring an end to war, his view of mankind and nations was pessimistic.
"
I LIVE
EVERY I
t was a running commentary on the kind of life he had led as a result of his growing business empire. Rootless, though, he was not. Nobel managed to "settle down" at
fixed points, from where he could oversee his spreading concern, which spanned the European continent and reached over to the United States. Between the years 1865 to 1873, Alfred Nobel had his home, laboratory and the center of his business near his factory in Kr端mmel, Hamburg. He moved into a magnificent house on Avenue Malakoff in Paris in 1873, where he seemed to have settled permanently for almost two decades. He would, however, spend the last five years of his life, in a lovely villa overlooking the Mediterranean, in San Remo, Italy. Sanremo, a town located in the Liguria region in northwestern Italy, has been a year-round health resort since 1861. It is located in that part of the Italian Riviera known as the Riviera dei Fiori, named for the flowers that are grown here and exported to continental Europe.
"
WHERE
OME IS WHER
M
ost of the assets proved to be linked to Nobel’s holdings in
the Russian oil company Baku Petroleum and a hundred or so ammunition and dynamite factories in Europe, North and South America, Australia and South Africa. Nobel also had substantial shareholdings in various including
mining gold
companies, mines,
as
well as revenues from his 355 international patents. In addition he owned a yacht ,the first in the world with an aluminium keel - a stud farm for riding horses, and three valuable properties: the villa Mio Nido in San Remo, an apartment in Paris, and the villa BjĂśrkborn in Karlskoga (where he never took up residence).
T ES
MY
MY M N N Y E MYNE ST Y MM S Y M YMY T S YNE T
NES N M T NEST Y Y NE MY M T MY NES S T MY NEST
MNEYSMTNMEN N E E N S E T Y M S T SYT N Y M E Y Y ST N M MY MY NE EST M ST MY NES MY
NES T
MY NES T
MY NE
MY NE
ST
NES SMY T Y M ST NE MY
W
hat to do with the latest acquisition? During the months of May and June, Nobel found time to bathe in the warm
waters of the Mediterranean. He now had an idea how to put the house in good use. "It will be an excellent place to undress in when we take our daily dip in the sea below; that will save us from being crowded out by Italians in the public bathing huts," he confided to Ragnar Sohlman. It was obviously said in pure jest, since he seemed to have had other purposes in mind. Plans for the renovation of the villa were made along with orders for a magnificent suite of furniture. There was speculation that he was
SMT Y E N T S E N TT TEST I S E T
T
MY
NEST
probably thinking of offering the villa to King Oscar of Sweden as a residence during the latter's spring visits to the Riviera. t was not to be. On December 10, 1896 Alfred
N EST NST YNE YT MY NEST
T S E N ST ST E Y N Y T M M S E MY N ST E N YT ST
Nobel succumbed to a lingering heart ailment, suffered a stroke, and died in the villa that was
once called "My Nest."
SANREMO SANREMO SANREMO SANREMO SANREMO
O O O O O
O
n 2 January 1897, the will of Alfred Nobel, the recently deceased Swedish dynamite millionaire was widely published. The bulk of his great fortune was left to
form a fund, from the annual income of which five prizes were to be distributed to those who, "during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit upon mankind." In equal amounts prize winners in physics. chemistry, medicine, literature and peace were to be named "whether Scandinavian or not." No man of great wealth had done anything like this before, and the news came as a great surprise to the public, and no less to the disappointed Nobel family. To Nobel's young assistant, Ragnar Sohlman, the will brought shock. Only after Nobel's death did he and the Swedish engineer Rudolf Lilljequist learn that they were to be the executors.
S
ohlman, a chemical engineer, who was then only twenty-five years old. He had worked in the United States at the Du Pont dynamite factory and was on the staff of the Swedish pavilion
at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 when a telegram arrived from Alfred Nobel, whom he had never met, offering him the position as his personal assistant. In the next three years he more than lived up to his high recommendations, not only serving as Nobel’s valued assistant and coworker, but becoming a close friend, a relationship unusual for Nobel. Lillequist, busy with his own affairs, left most of the executor work to Sohlman, and no-one could have been better qualified. The task proved to be Herculean.
In the first place, the passage in the will about the prizes was legally defective. Nobel’s purpose was clear enough, and he had identified the awarding bodies: in Sweden two academies and the Karolinska medical institute and in Norway, then part of a monarchic union with Sweden, a committee to be elected by the parliament.
S
ohlman not only has to deal with the relatives and the Swedish institutions, but with Nobel’s complicated finances and international business affairs. In the
midst of all this, he is suddenly called up to do his military service. Since estate matters cannot be postponed, Sohlman is permitted to install himself and his accountant in a private building inside the army camp, where they attend to correspondence in the evening after the day’s drilling is done. A corporal bicycles every day with their letters to the nearest post office. Since telephones are few and far between, Sohlman pays to have one set up in his own quarters, which he keeps busy. When Sohlman finishes his service and departs, the army probably sighs with relief.
T
o counter the Paris court’s finding of domicile, the executors – once all the securities and documents had arrived in Sweden – got the Karlskoga District
Court to declare Björkborn to have been Nobel’s domicile. But this was just a stalemate for the time being with two courts each claiming the right to probate the will. But a stalemate was not enough. They needed Paris to give up its claim to having any jurisdiction over the probate.
VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL VICAR OF THE SOUL A young 25 year old Ragnar Sohlman , he was to inherit the task of setting up the worlds first awards ceremony of its kind.
W
hen his will was read, it shocked his family and the world. Giant bequests for the advancement of science, literature and peace were not exactly common. The international
press was positive, especially since Nobel had made a point of saying the awards should be made without considering country of origin. Initial reactions in the Swedish press were positive too, but King Oscar II was horrified. He saw the will as unpatriotic, as bypassing Swedish interests, and the Peace Prize in particular as a major political hornet’s nest since it was to be awarded by the Norwegian parliament while Sweden and Norway were in the process of getting a national divorce. His relatives expected a more traditional approach to his legacy. From a business perspective, there were grave concerns that in order to go through with this crazy prize scheme, they would be forced to sell Alfred’s stock in Branobel, his brothers’ successful oil company in Russia, to outsiders. Not only would this introduce nonfamily into the ruling structure of the business, but the mass stock sale could depress the company’s worth and ruin its finances. The heirs of Alfred’s brother Robert’s filed suit to contest the will. Robert’s son Ludvig initiated sequestration procedures against Alfred’s properties.
P
auline Nobel, along with Hjalmar and Ludvig as well as Carl and Ingeborg Ridderstolpe, protested the validity of the proceedings. The legal process, that was now
beginning in Sweden caused much worry and a huge waste of time. Early on, Sohlman had sensed a glimmer of hope that an understanding could be reached. As the heirs expressed their assurance to the court that, whether or not they won.
F
inally the family was appeased with the help of Emanuel, the son of Alfred’s brother Ludvig of
I
fake obituary fame. He didn’t want to contest
the foundation; he just wanted to ensure the shares of Branobel stayed in the family. King Oscar II himself tried to browbeat him into breaking the will, summoning him to an audience and lecturing him on the problems the Peace Prize would cause. Emanuel stood firm, even shoring up Sohlman’s spirits when they flagged, telling him that the word for executor in Russian means “vicar of the soul.”
F B
ut what to do with Nobel’s funds and securities, most of which were held in Paris banks and would be subject to excessove taxes even if the will was not probated
there? Sohlman could not simply instruct the banks to make the transfer to Sweden, for such a major move would surely come to the notice of the French authorities. Moreover, the Nobel relatives in Sweden naturally wanted combined assets before tax which were, in other words, 33,233, 792 Swedish crowns just under $7 million then.
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M
ESTATE WEALTH
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INHERITANCE N
LEGACY SWEDE
POLITICSFAMI
NORWAY FAITH
LEGALITY FRANCEFRIENDSHIP ACADEMY TRUST LOYALTY BURDEN INTEGRITY SOHLMAN
AWARDS HUMANITY
THERESA KING YEATS MALALA SUU KYI EINSTEIN
ECKETT PINTER
OBAMA MANDEL
OHR
SHAW
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A
pressing problem is to get the award-granting institutions on board. The Norwegian parliament, regarding the responsibility as an honor, accepts with alacrity. But the
Swedish bodies have reservations. Some members of the Swedish Academy think that reading books in foreign languages is none of their business, while in the Academy of Science there is sentiment that Nobel's money should go for research in Swedish laboratories, not to foreign scientists. Acceptance of Nobel's charge is finally made contingent upon approval of the will by all the relatives.
F
rench postal rules limited the amount that one could insure each mailing to 20,000 francs, but Sohlman was not stumped by this. He quickly drew up and signed an insurance
agreement with the Rothschilds banking house, by which he could send the documents in packages up to a value of 2. 5 million francs. Sweden’s consul general and the young executor carried loaded revolvers when, by horse-drawn cab, they transported the major part of Alfred’s assets in France from the consulate to the Gare du Nord. Ragnar Sohlman continued on to St. Pctersburg to sort through Alfred’s assets with Emanuel. Emanuelts willingness to cooperate meant that Sohlman quickly found the sources for an accounting of the estate• s Russian assets.
O
n October 30. 1897. a legal inventory of all Alfred Nobel’s goods and chattels was made at Bjorkborn. Summons had been sent to the heirs. Hjalmar and Ludvig, as well as
the Ridderstolpes, appeared in person.
R
obert’s widow. Mrs. Pauline Nobel, was represented by the assistant district judge, E. Hagelin. Carl Lindhagen, Stockholm ·s assessor and later mayor, and Jacob
Seligman acted as administrators while Sohlman and Liljequist formally presented the estate. It was established that, outside of Sweden, Alfred had left assets in France. England, Germany, Scodand, Italy, Austria, Nor-way, and last but not least Russia. The Swedish branch is supported by many conservative fellow countrymen, who call the will "unpatriotic" because the prizes were not reserved for Swedes and who fear that the Norwegians will use the peace prize to gain friends for their efforts toward independence.
K
ing Oscar II of Sweden had similar concerns and although mainly concerned about the Norwegians, he tried to persuade Emanuel to get the terms of the will
changed, arguing that Emanuel should not neglect his duty to the family "in favor of the nonsensical ideas of your uncle," influenced by "peace fanatics and particularly by women." The king is obviously thinking of the Austrian peace leader Baroness Bertha von Suttner, who helped Nobel decide to include peace among his prizes. Emanuel stands his ground, replying that he would not expose his family to future reproaches "for having appropriated funds which rightfully belonged to deserving scientists."
H
ad Nobel written dreamers into the will, the institutions chosen to make the awards would surely have rejected the assignment altogether.
Now they are free to formulate their own policies and methods of selection, and many of their awards will go to seniors for past achievements.
T
he very fact that Nobel's testament is so loosely drawn makes it possible for Sohlman and Lindhagen to arrive at the final settlement with
all the parties. On 29 June 1900, King Oscar himself approves the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, created to provide the missing legatee and to receive the designated assets from the executors. Now proud of Nobel's prizes, at the first award ceremony in 1901 the king begins the tradition of handing out the prizes which has been continued by his royal successors. Sohlman, looking back after a half century in which he himself had a distinguished career, including ten years serving as managing director of the Nobel Foundation, concluded his story of the long struggle over the will with an understatement, "In the light of later experience, the final outcome must be deemed satisfactory." Without the skill and dedication of the personal assistant Nobel hired unseen from across the Atlantic, there would have been no such happy ending. Where there was a will, legally defective as it was and "nonsensical" as it might have seemed, Ragnar Sohlman found the way.
King Oscar II of Sweden- a monarch who mistrusted his neighbours and resented Nobels will to the point of trying to influence Emanuel Nobel to contest the will.
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M
y
immediate
return
to
Paris
was
necessitated by telegrams and letters from Consul General Nordling, informing
us that Hjalmar and Ludvig Nobel and Count Carl Gustaf Ridderstolpe, an in-law, had arrived in Paris to investigate the situation with a view to a possible court action against the will. Immediately after my arrival we therefore began to transfer the Nobel securities from the bank in Paris ,partly to London and partly to Stockholm in insured postal packages, which had to be presented at a special Expedition des Finances at the Gare Du Nord. Securities to the value of no more than the above insurance limit of two and a half million francs were then withdrawn daily for a week from the vaults of the banks and taken to the (Swedish) Consulate General’s office where they were listed, tied up in bundles, wrapped up and sealed. In the afternoon they were taken to the Gare du Norde. Since the actual transfers to and from the Consulate General’s office involved certain risks of hold-ups and robberies,special precautions were taken and care was exercised to avoid attention. After the securities had ben packed into a suitcase we took an ordinary horse-cab from the Consulate General to the Gare du Nord station. With a loaded revolver in my hand I sat in the cab prepared to defend the suitcase in case a collision with another carriage had been arranged by robbers-at that time not an unusual occurrence in Paris. -Taken from Ragnar Sohlman,Nobel: Dynamite and Peace
S
ohlman may only have been 26 but he was not shy of direct action. Together with Liljequist and carrying a revolver for security, they simply drove around from
one bank to the next in Paris in a horse and carriage. Using their authority as Executors they just removed everything they could find; all monies, shares, bonds, securities and other documents belonging to the Nobel estate. They then proceeded to the office of the Swedish consul general, who had agreed to help them. In a locked room and while Nobel’s relatives were in another room in the same building, they divided and packaged the securities so that each package complied with the insurer’s requirement that no package exceed a specified value.The packages were then “freighted” back to Sweden from the Gare du Nord railway station as registered packages.
F
ortunately for the executors, the Nobel family is divided. While the Swedish branch are disposed to contest the will, those living in Russia, headed by Nobel's favorite
nephew, Emanuel, want Alfred Nobel's wishes to be respected. Emanuel tells Sohlman about the Russian concept that the executor is "the spokesman of the soul" of the testator.The Swedish branch is supported by many conservative fellow countrymen, who call the will "unpatriotic" because the prizes were not reserved for Swedes and who fear that the Norwegians will use the peace prize to gain friends for their efforts toward independence .
A
pressing problem was to try and get the awardgranting institutions on board. The Norwegian parliament, regarding the responsibility as an
honor, accepted with alacrity. But the Swedish bodies have reservations. Some members of the Swedish Academy thought that reading books in foreign languages was none of their business, while in the Academy of Science there was the sentiment that Nobel’s money should go for research in Swedish laboratories, not to foreign scientists. Acceptance of Nobel’s charge is finally made contingent upon approval of the will by all the relatives.
T
he remaining issues were resolved when Sohlman enlisted the aid of an actual lawyer. The new legal adviser wrote to Swedish attorney general asking him
to weigh in on the case, and the AG came down on their side saying that even though no direct interests of the crown were involved, it was right that the government “assist in putting the testator’s wishes into effect.” With that decision on their side, King Oscar II went off to suck an egg and all the prizeawarding bodies accepted their duties by late 1898.
I
t was now that Karlskoga and Björkborn Manor were to play an important role in Nobel’s Will. Much importance was placed upon the question
of where Alfred Nobel had legally had his home. At the time of his death, he still owned his grand apartment in Paris plus a huge house in San Remo, Italy. Which property could actually be called his home? In the end, the courts decided that his legal home was in Karlskoga. Traditionally, it is said that this ruling was based upon the fact that Alfred’s three much-loved Russian Orlov horses were stabled in Karlskoga. In French law, a person’s home was where his or her horses were stabled. As a direct result of this ruling in the French courts, the execution of Alfred’s Will became subject to Swedish law. Had Alfred’s Will been subject to French law it is doubtful it would have met the strict, formal requirements necessary for it to be executed under France’s legal system.
STOCKHOLM STOCKHOLM STOCKHOLM STOCKHOLM STOCKHOLM
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he will was now settled. The task of achieving unity among all the affected parties on how to put its provisions into practice remained. The final version of the Statutes of the Nobel
Foundation contained clarifications of the wording of the will and a provision that prizes not considered possible to award could be allocated to funds that would otherwise promote the intentions of the testator. The Statutes provided for the establishment of Nobel Committees to perform prize adjudication work and Nobel Institutes to support this work, as well as the appointment of a Board of Directors in charge of the Foundation's financial and administrative management.
O
n June 29, 1900, the Statutes of the newly created legatee, the Nobel Foundation, and special regulations for the Swedish Prize-Awarding Institutions were promulgated by the King in
Council (Oscar II). The same year as the political union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved in 1905, special regulations were adopted on April 10, 1905, by the Nobel Committee of the Storting (known since January 1, 1977 as the Norwegian Nobel Committee), the awarder of the Nobel Peace Prize.
T
he government formally endorsed the creation of the Nobel Foundation on September 9th, 1899. One more year was spent in negotiations between the awarding institutions and the
Nobel family over the statutes of the Foundation. On June 29th, 1900 a royal ordinance established the statutes of the Nobel Foundation and special regulations governing all the Swedish prize-giving committees. On December 10th, 1901, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in Stockholm and Oslo.
T
o create a worthy framework around the prizes, the Board decided at an early stage that it would erect its own building
in Stockholm, which would include a hall for the Prize Award Ceremony and Banquet as well as its own administrative offices. Ferdinand Boberg was selected as the architect. He presented an ambitious proposal for a Nobel Palace, which generated extensive publicity but also led to doubts and questions. World War I broke out before any decision could be made. The proposal was "put on ice" and by the time the matter was revived after the war, Ivar Tengbom was busily designing what later became the Stockholm Concert Hall. Meanwhile the Stockholm City Hall was being built under the supervision of Ragnar Ă–stberg. Boberg, Tengbom, and Ă–stberg were probably the most respected architects in Sweden at that time. Because it would have access to both these buildings for its events, the Nobel Foundation now only needed space for its administrative offices. On December 19, 1918, a building at Sturegatan 14 was bought for this purpose. After years of renovation there, the Foundation finally left its cramped premises at Norrlandsgatan 6 in 1926 and moved to Sturegatan 14, where the Foundation has been housed ever since.
The creation of a worthy framework around the prizes, the Board decided at an early stage that it would erect its own building in Stockholm, which would include a hall for the Prize Award Ceremony and Banquet as well as its own administrative offices. World War I broke out before any decision could be made. The proposal was “put on ice” and by the time the matter was revived after the war, Ivar Tengbom was busily designing what later became the Stockholm Concert Hall. Meanwhile the Stockholm City Hall was being built under the supervision of Ragnar Östberg. Boberg, Tengbom, and Östberg were probably the most respected architects in Sweden at that time. Because it would have access to both these buildings for its events, the Nobel Foundation now only needed space for its administrative offices. On December 19, 1918, a building at Sturegatan 14 was bought for this purpose. After years of renovation there, the Foundation finally left its cramped premises at Norrlandsgatan 6 in 1926 and moved to Sturegatan 14, where the Foundation has been housed ever since. The enduring legacy of Alfred Nobel was indeed changed from the one he had read back in 1888 in Paris. If it wasn’t for his executors, particularly Ragnar Sohlman, his estate would have been distributed amonst his extensive family and Swedish authorities. It is a story that is a parable on humanity itself. A hugely wealthy and talented man but when faced with his own demise realised that even with all these trappings of success they could not bring happiness and that although it was sorely contestd his will was to create a lasting celebration of the best achievements of man in these 115 years. The story of the establishment of the Nobel awards is one which showsmanity both good and bad. Looking at it today Alfred Nobel would surely be proud .