Bertha von Suttner

Bertha von Suttner

Bertha von Suttner c. 1906
Born 9 June 1843
Prague, Bohemia,
Austrian Empire
Died 21 June 1914 (aged 71)
Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Occupation Pacifist, novelist
Awards Nobel Peace Prize, 1905

Bertha Felicitas Sophie Freifrau von Suttner (Baroness Bertha von Suttner, née Countess Kinsky, Gräfin Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau; 9 June 1843 – 21 June 1914) was an Austrian pacifist and novelist. In 1905 she was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, thus being the second female Nobel laureate after Marie Curie's 1903 award,[1] and the first Austrian laureate.

Early life

Suttner was born in Prague, Bohemia, the daughter of impoverished[2] Austrian Lieutenant general (Feldmarschall-Leutnant) Franz de Paula Josef Graf Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau and his wife Sophie Wilhelmine von Körner,[3] a distant relative of the poet Theodor Körner. She had an older brother, Arthur Franz Graf Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau. Suttner's father died at the age of 75, before she was born.

As a child, she learnt several languages, was interested in music, and travelled a lot. To make a living, she had to work as a governess to the wealthy Suttner family from 1873. She became engaged to the Suttners' youngest son, engineer and novelist Arthur Gundaccar Freiherr von Suttner (1850–1902), but his family opposed the match, and she was dismissed. At the intercession of her former employers, she answered an advertisement from Alfred Nobel (1833–1896) in 1876 to become his secretary-housekeeper at his Paris residence. However, she only stayed two weeks before returning to Vienna and secretly marrying Arthur on 12 June 1876, whereupon her bride groom was immediately disinherited.

Suttner's living house in Tbilisi

Bertha and Arthur left Austria and at the invitation of Princess Ekaterine Dadiani of Mingrelia for the next eight years moved to Georgia within Georgia, where the couple lived under difficult conditions in Tbilisi (Tiflis). Both earned their living by writing easy read novels and translations. Their German rendering of the Georgian national epic The Knight in the Panther's Skin remained unfinished. After her husband had published several reports from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, Suttner too, under a pseudonym, began a journalistic career writing short stories and essays on the Georgian country and its people, which appeared in several Austrian newspapers.

Impact

Suttner and her husband finally reconciled with his family and in 1885 could return to Austria, where the couple lived at Harmannsdorf Castle in Lower Austria. She continued her journalistic activity and concentrated on peace and conflict studies corresponding with the French philosopher Ernest Renan and influenced by the International Arbitration and Peace Association founded by Hodgson Pratt in 1880.

Suttner in 1896

In 1889 Suttner became a leading figure in the peace movement with the publication of her pacifist novel, Die Waffen nieder! ("Lay Down Your Arms!"), which made her one of the leading figures of the Austrian peace movement. The book was published in 37 editions and translated into 12 languages. She witnessed the foundation of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and called for the establishment of the Austrian Gesellschaft der Friedensfreunde pacifist organization in a 1891 Neue Freie Presse editorial. Suttner became chairwoman and also founded the German Peace Society the next year. She gained international repute as editor of the international pacifist journal Die Waffen nieder!, named after her book, from 1892 to 1899. In 1897 she presented Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria with a list of signatures urging the establishment of an International Court of Justice and took part in the organisation of the First Hague Conventions in 1899, however, she had to realize that her ambitious expectations were belied.

Upon her husband's death in 1902, Suttner had to sell Harmannsdorf Castle and moved back to Vienna. In 1904 she addressed the International Congress of Women in Berlin and for seven months travelled around the United States attending a universal peace congress in Boston and meeting President Theodore Roosevelt.

Nobel Peace Prize

Though her personal contact with Alfred Nobel had been brief, she corresponded with him until his death in 1896, and it is believed that she was a major influence in his decision to include a peace prize among those prizes provided in his will, which she received in the fifth term on 10 December 1905. The bestowal took place on 18 April 1906 in Kristiania.

In 1907 Suttner attended the Second Hague Peace Conference, which however mainly negotiated on aspects of law of war. On the eve of World War I, she continued to advise against international armament. In 1911 she became a member of the advisory council of the Carnegie Peace Foundation.[4] On 21 June 1914, a few weeks before war broke out, she succumbed to cancer. She had planned to attend the next Universal Peace Congress, which was scheduled to take place in Vienna in the autumn.

In the comprehensive socio-cultural debate of her day, Suttner's pacifism was influenced by the writings of Immanuel Kant, Henry Thomas Buckle, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin and Leo Tolstoy (Tolstoy praised Die Waffen nieder!) [5] conceiving peace as jusnuralistic original state impaired by the human aberrance of war and militarism. Therefore, a right to peace has to be demandable under international law and is necessary in the sense of an evolutionary (Darwinist) conception of history. Suttner was also an accomplished journalist, with one historian stating her work revealed her as "a most perceptive and adept political commentator" .[5]

Commemoration on coins and stamps

On film

TV

Works in English translation

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ List of female recipients of the Nobel Prize
  2. ↑ Biography on Timeline of Nobel Prize Winners
  3. ↑ Smith, Digby; Kudrna, Leopold (2008). "Biographical Dictionary of All Austrian Generals During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1792-1815: Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau, Franz de Paula Joseph Graf". napoleon-series.org.
  4. ↑ Public Domain One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). "Suttner, Bertha". Encyclopædia Britannica 32 (12th ed.). London & New York. p. 628.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Bertha von Suttner by Irwin Adams. The World Encyclopedia of Peace. Edited by Ervin László, Linus Pauling and Jong Youl Yoo. Oxford : Pergamon, 1986. ISBN 0-08-032685-4, (vol. 3, pp. 201–4).
  6. ↑ Kelly, A. (1991). "Film As Antiwar Propaganda". Peace & Change 16: 97–112. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0130.1991.tb00567.x.
  7. ↑ Ned Med Vaabnene (1914) – IMDb
  8. ↑ Herz der Welt (1952) – IMDb

External links

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