Heinrich Lammasch

Heinrich Lammasch (1853 to 1920) was an Austrian jurist, a professor of criminal and international law, a member of the Hague Arbitration Tribunal and the last Minister-President of Austria. Born in Seitenstetten in Lower Austria, he studied law at the University of Vienna, took his doctorate in 1876 and qualified for the criminal law faculty at Vienna in 1879. His pamphlet on objective danger in the concept of attempted crime won him an extraordinary professorship in 1882 and a full professorship at Innsbruck in 1885. Back in Vienna from 1889, he argued for a league of nations and became an international arbitrator who took part in the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and, as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, arranged the Newfoundland and Orinoco disputes. Emperor Franz Joseph appointed him to the Austrian House of Lords in 1899, and Emperor Charles named him Minister-President on 27 October 1918, a post he held for a few weeks while the empire dissolved.