Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914)

Two weeks ago, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize, although a narcissistic political leader claimed to deserve this award. Anyway, I think this is a good time to pay attention to a person who was not only the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but who also had a major impact on the creation of this award: Bertha von Suttner.
Bertha von Suttner was born in Prague in 1843 as Countess Kinsky. At the time, Prague belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Bertha had Austrian nationality. Until the age of thirty, Bertha led an existence that was not unusual in her circles: studying, travelling and an active social life. Then, in 1873, when the family fortune was almost exhausted, partly due to her mother’s passion for gambling (her father had died before she was born), she became governess to the four daughters of Baron von Suttner. She gets into a relationship with the seven years younger son Arthur. This is disapproved of by the family and she is fired. In 1876, she applied for a job as a secretary to the industrialist Alfred Nobel, who lived in Paris, but decided to return after a short stay there and secretly married Arthur. The couple goes to live in the Caucasus at the invitation of a friend. They earn their living by giving lessons and by Arthur's journalistic work. During this time, Bertha began to write, first socially critical articles, later also novels. In 1885, the couple was accepted again by the von Suttner family and they returned to Austria.
Through a friend, Bertha now comes into contact with various peace organisations. In 1886 she went back to Paris for a while, where she met Alfred Nobel again. A strong, lasting friendship develops between the two. The pacifist ideas that Bertha von Suttner had developed in the meantime would have a great influence on Nobel and partly because of her he later decided to establish the peace prize, in addition to the prizes for science and literature. In 1889, Bertha von Suttner’s most famous book Die Waffen nieder! (translated into English as Lay Down Your Arms!) was published in a small edition, after it had previously been refused by various publishers. In this partly autobiographical novel, the female protagonist undergoes all the misery of the war. The story is also very realistic, because Bertha von Suttner had done thorough research into the wars of that time. The novel is a great success and from then on Bertha is a leading figure in the peace movement. She founded various peace organisations and attended international conferences. In 1892, together with the later Nobel Prize winner Alfred Hermann Fried, she took the initiative to create the peace magazine Lay Down Your Arms! She supported attempts by the Russian tsar to organise a peace conference and when it actually took place in The Hague in the Netherlands in 1899, she was the only participant who did not represent a government and she was also the only woman.
Meanwhile, Alfred Nobel died in 1896. For the peace prize awarded from 1901 onwards, he probably had Bertha von Suttner in mind as the first laureate. She did not receive it until 1905.
In the years that followed, she played an important role in the attempts to bring about reconciliation between Germany and England. She attends many congresses and conferences, including the Hague Peace Conference of 1907, and she makes many tours, including in Scandinavia and the United States. In addition, she writes many articles and also some books. In 1913, she again addresses the International Peace Congress in The Hague. She had become ill in the meantime, but in May 1914 she was yet able to help prepare for the Peace Congress in Vienna. For her, the danger of war was already very real. A month later, she died of cancer in Vienna, just before the war, the First World War, would indeed break out. Her ashes are interred in Gotha in Germany.
The significance of Bertha von Suttner lies not only in the fact that she denounced the misery of the war and in her organisational work. She also came up with concrete proposals, such as the establishment of an international court of arbitration to mediate conflicts between states, a peace union of all states to repel with common strength the attack of one state on another and the establishment of an international court to administer justice on behalf of all peoples. Some of her proposals are only now being properly implemented. Bertha von Suttner also had a visionary view. As early as 1911, she was the first to point out the possibility of nuclear war and a year later she foresaw the misery that air wars would cause, only ten years after the first flight with an airplane had taken place. (see here) In Austria today, she is considered a great national personality. Her image is therefore on an Austrian 2-euro coin and she is also depicted on commemorative euro coins. Also postage stamps commemorate her memory in several countries Moreover, streets and squares in Austria, but also in other countries, are named after her. Her book Lay Down Your Arms! is reprinted to this day.