31 Facts About Henri Hauser

Henri Hauser was a French historian, geographer, and economist.

Henri Hauser was born in Oran into a middle-class Jewish family who had moved to French Algeria for health reasons but returned to France when Hauser was four years old.

Henri Hauser initially taught in provincial lycees before taking his doctorate in 1892 with a thesis on the 16th-century Huguenot leader, Francois de la Noue.

Henri Hauser went on to become a professor of ancient and medieval history at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, modern history and geography at the University of Dijon, and finally a professor of history and economic history at the Sorbonne from 1919 to 1936.

Henri Hauser was born into a Jewish family of republican sympathies.

The family returned to France when Henri Hauser was four years old, on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War.

Henri Hauser enrolled Henri in the Lycee Condorcet to prepare him for eventual study at the Ecole Normale Superieure.

Henri Hauser subsequently taught at the lycees of Pau and Poitiers before receiving his doctorate in 1892 from the Faculte des lettres de Paris.

Henri Hauser had discovered Philippe Canaye's hitherto unpublished account of his 1573 voyage to Constantinople in the Bibliotheque nationale de France.

Henri Hauser translated the Italian manuscript and published it in 1897 with extensive notes and a biography of Canaye which corrected many errors in previous accounts of his life.

Henri Hauser was promoted to Professor of History at Clermont-Ferrand in 1896 and remained at the university until 1899 when the Dreyfus Affair made his position untenable.

Henri Hauser took a leave of absence from Clermont-Ferrand, moved back to Paris with his wife Therese and their young daughter Alice and threw himself into writing teaching manuals for geography and comparative studies on the teaching of geography and economics in the French colonies.

In 1901, Henri Hauser was offered an appointment to the University of Dijon and taught there until 1919 as Professor of Modern History.

Henri Hauser taught commercial and industrial geography at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers from 1915 to 1933, first as a lecturer and then as a professor.

Henri Hauser began there as a lecturer in modern economic history, was promoted to professor sans chaire in 1921, and in 1927 was given the university's first chair in economic history.

Henri Hauser co-authored two books on the geography of France and its colonies with Joseph Fevre: Regions et pays de France and Notre Empire colonial.

The book was translated into English by Manfred Emanuel and Henri Hauser and was published in London in 1917 and New York in 1918 as Germany's Commercial Grip on the World.

In 1923, Hauser was invited by Edwin F Gay to be an exchange professor at Harvard University where he taught an economics course and gave various lectures both at the university and in other American cities.

Henri Hauser was instrumental in bringing other French academics to teach in Brazilian universities.

Henri Hauser was appointed to its administrative council in 1912, contributed numerous articles on French historical figures to its publications, and was elected its vice president in 1933.

Henri Hauser retired from the University of Paris in 1936 at the age of 70 with Marc Bloch succeeding him in the chair of economic history, but he continued his scholarly work and publication in the ensuing years.

Henri Hauser came out of retirement and moved with his family to Rennes in 1939 to cover a teaching post at the university left vacant when its lecturer was drafted.

Henri Hauser remained in Rennes, now forced to wear the yellow badge, and unable to teach.

In June 1942 Henri Hauser was warned that his name was on a list of persons to be arrested the following day.

Henri Hauser fled with his wife, daughter, and granddaughter to a small village near Toulouse where they lived in hiding for the remainder of the war.

However, Henri Hauser's health began to fail and he died in Montpellier on 27 May 1946, shortly before his 80th birthday.

Henri Hauser's funeral, like his wedding, was a non-religious ceremony.

Henri Hauser married Therese Franck on 3 September 1888 in a non-religious wedding ceremony, which drew disapproval from their Jewish families and from his Catholic classmates at the Ecole Normale.

Henri Hauser is the son of the historian Francois Crouzet and Hauser's granddaughter Francoise Dabert-Hauser.

The draft of the memoirs was amongst the papers Henri Hauser had to leave behind in Rennes in his flight from the city in 1942.

The book is a collection of papers delivered at a two-day international colloquium on the life and work of Henri Hauser held in January 2003 at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris.