The tributes continue for the 150th anniversary of the death of General Guillaume Henri Dufour. After the inauguration Monday of a new commemorative plaque in front of his grave, in the cemetery of the kings, this Wednesday was dedicated to retrospectives and various speeches.
Speeches took place at the Dufour house, in the Malagnou district, until the middle of the afternoon. A tribute to music was then paid to the cemetery this afternoon before a more festive game this evening at the Arquebuse.
Military, engineer, visionary urban planner, we owe General Dufour the first topographic statement of Switzerland and many legacies in political matters. “It is in particular thanks to the measure and the humanism which he showed to resolve the internal conflict of the Sonderbund that a national reconclitiation could take place after 1848 and that the federal institutions that we know today we could see the light of day,” explains Jean-Pierre Barras, secretary of the Dufour Maison Foundation, “therefore as such, he is still alive in our country!”.
He was also and above all was a pioneer of humanitarian aid as he knows him today and one of the first presidents of the International Committee of the Red Cross. A heritage that continues 150 years later. “The values of international humanitarian law, as we lappelle today, are fundamental. Especially of our time, where this right is undermined, not respected, flouted! It is all the more important to highlight the heritage of Guillaume Henri Dufour, “explains the mayor of Geneva, Alfonso Gomez, present for these commemorations.