Pierre Cérésole

Pierre Cérésole or Ceresole (17 August 1879 – 23 October 1945) was a Swiss pacifist, remembered for founding the peace organisation Service Civil International (SCI) and the international workcamp movement.

Life Cérésole was born in Lausanne on 17 August 1879, ninth of the ten children of Emma (née Secretan) and Paul Cérésole. His father was a lawyer, member of the Swiss Federal Council and a President of the Swiss Confederation. His mother died when he was nine years old.

He studied engineering at ETH in Zurich, obtained a PhD and then pursued further studies in physics and mathematics in Germany. In 1909 he turned down the offer of a professorship at ETH and spent the next five years travelling in the United States, Hawaii and Japan, doing both manual and intellectual work. Cérésole, together with English Quaker Hubert Parris, organised a workcamp in the French village of Esnes-en-Argonne, which had been badly damaged during the Battle of Verdun. The team of volunteers, which set to work in November 1920, included three Germans, an Austrian and a Dutchman. A Dutchwoman covered the initial costs of the work and did the cooking and washing. They constructed two wooden houses and then, when the French government cancelled their contract, turned to clearing fields of debris, filling up shell-holes and repairing a road until, in April 1921, the French authorities asked them to leave. In spite of its premature end, the project had been of benefit to both the volunteers and the villagers, and Cérésole's enthusiasm for workcamps was undiminished.

Cérésole organised more workcamps during the 1920s with the help of his brother, colonel Ernest Cérésole. The newly founded organisation was called Service Civil International and sent volunteers to, for example, a Swiss village that had been damaged by a landslide, another village that had been damaged by an avalanche, and to Liechtenstein in the aftermath of floods. In the 1920s and 1930s, Cérésole combined his work running SCI with teaching, first at the Quaker school in Gland and then at the grammar school in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Between 1934 and 1937 Cérésole worked with a team of three (SCI member Paul Schenker and two English Quakers) helping to rebuild villages in Bihar in northeastern India after the 1934 Nepal–India earthquake 1934 earthquake. In 1938 and 1939, Cérésole was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Cérésole lived in his native Switzerland during World War II continuing his work as secretary of SCI. On two occasions, as a protest against the war, he illegally attempted to cross the border into Germany, which landed him in prison for several weeks. In 1941 he married Lise David. He died in Lutry on 23 October 1945. After Cérésole's death, his friend and peace activist, Hélène Monastier, published his biography and a collection of his correspondence.