Paul Guggenheim was born in Zurich in 1899. He studied law in Geneva, Rome and then Berlin where he received his doctorate in 1924. After a stay as a section leader at the Institute for International law at the University of Kiel, Germany he settled in Geneva, where his academic career took off.
In 1928, he worked as an outside lecturer then in 1930 as a lecturer at the Graduate Institute of International Studies before working as a professor from 1941to 1969. Between 1955 and 1965 he was also Chair of the Board for Public Law at the University of Geneva. In addition to teaching (Guggenheim also gave lectures at the Academy for International Law in The Hague) he took in numerous committees, delegations and learned societies (Institute for International Law) a seat and had interests in international courts operate (especially at International Court in The Hague). In his work he dealt in-depth with aspects of positive law. He was interested in international organization and integration, for peaceful conflict resolution, for international process for the position of Switzerland and the law of neutrality in the 20th Century, for the protection of minorities and human rights and the situation of the Jewish community. His favourite subjects were of a more theoretical nature and related to the foundations and sources of international law and their relation with national legal systems and the history of the human rights.
“Traité de droit international public” (1953-54; 1967 revised and expanded edition; German “textbook of international law” 1947-51) was due to the successful synthesis of careful practical and theoretical shaped by normativism the Vienna School reflections on a classic.
This biography was translated from: http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D15769.php