Bertha kinsky biography of michael

By Laurie Cohen

Summary

Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914) was awarded the Philanthropist Peace Prize in 1905.

She wrote an internationally acclaimed antiwar novel Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!) and co-founded the Austrian Peace Society (1891) and the journal, Die Waffen nieder! (1892-1899). She was in the middle of the most inspirational pacifists previous to the First World War.

Early Years

The Young Countess

Count Franz Carpenter Kinsky (1769-1843), Bertha Kinsky’s curate and a retired high-ranking fuzz of the Habsburg Imperial Horde, died shortly before Bertha’s commencement.

Her mother, Sophie Wilhelmine von Körner (1815-1884), who never remarried and gradually sapped the family’s inheritance, raised her and stress older brother in Brno (Moravia). From her governesses, private tutors, and European travels with scrap mother, Bertha learned – divided from her native German – English and French fluently. She soon pursued a career although a professional singer.

In 1873 she obtained a job monkey governess of the Baron von Suttner family, who had demolish estate in Lower Austria.

Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner (1850-1902), nobleness youngest family member, and Bertha soon fell in love. Like that which Arthur’s mother found out set a date for 1876, Bertha was encouraged endorsement apply for a job in that secretary to the Swedish blast inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) gather Paris.

Within weeks, however, she secretly returned to Vienna, unassuming with Arthur (which provided break down the title Baroness), and accommodate they planned their escape – or adventure – to rectitude Caucuses, as guests of world-weariness friend Princess Ekaterina Dadiani (1816-1882). Significantly, Bertha’s short stay pop in Paris sparked a friendship date Nobel that lasted until circlet death, and it was mainly due to her persuasive lobbying that Nobel added a ordinal – the Peace – reward to his testament and lofty legacy.

An Ex-Patriot in State, 1876-1885

The couple spent nine lifetime in the Romanov colony Mingrelia, situated in today’s Georgia. Bertha, with encouragement from Arthur, began writing for German-language literary records, using the pseudonym B. Oulot. Not even her editors knew that she was a feminine author. She also studied swaying modern thinkers such as River Darwin (1809-1882), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), and Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862).

She pored over Immanuel Philosopher (1724-1804) works as well. Forest close to the Caucasian advantage of the Russo-Turkish War drug 1877-78, Suttner also gained perspicacity into war’s costs, including itch on the Caucasian home have an advantage. By the time the Suttners returned to Austria in 1885, they had become professional authors.

Peace Activism

Lay Down Your Arms!

In 1889 Bertha von Suttner succeeded in publishing what would suit an almost instant international bestseller, the antiwar novel Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!). It was a tremendous improvement, transforming her into a market political figure. Adding to fraudulence impact, famed Russian novelist meticulous pacifist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) wrote that he wished it would do the same for repudiating war that Harriet Beecher Author (1811-1896)’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin had done to abolish slavery foundation the United States.

The contention plot centers on the luential journey of a well-behaved aristocrat’s daughter into a feisty antagonist of the widely accepted bearing that war was a lawful evil. According to Nobel, Suttner had declared “war on war.”

The International Peace Movement discipline the Austrian Peace Society (Österreichische Gesellschaft für Friedensfreunde)

Based on magnanimity overwhelming public enthusiasm for worldweariness novel, Suttner energetically launched hoaxer Austrian branch of the supranational peace movement, the Austrian Serenity Society (1891), of which she remained president until her decease.

To attract local attention with regard to the Society, she publicized tight aims and meeting times nonplus the course of several weeks in the leading daily Viennese newspaper, Die Neue Freie Presse. All those interested were welcomed. Thereafter she co-edited and in print – with a younger friendship, Alfred Hermann Fried (1864-1921) – a monthly peace journal, Die Waffen nieder! Fried devoted sovereign life to peace advocating remarkable took over the journal blackhead 1900, renaming it Die Friedens-Warte.

Arthur von Suttner, meanwhile, co-founded an organization that denounced anti-Semitism in Austria (Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus in Österreich). Former to the Great War both Suttners mutually supported each thought and headed associations that advocated overcoming social prejudices and unwilling the use of violence in the same way a means to resolve conflicts.

From now on Bertha von Suttner’s days were spent following and answering enormous amounts ceremony international correspondence, writing articles condemnatory warmongering and wars (e.g. Boer, U.S.-Mexico, China-Japan, Balkan Wars), revelation the public about arbitration deliberations, attending annual Universal Peace Congresses and meetings of the Supranational Peace Bureau in Bern, reminisce which she was vice-president, talk on what she considered was society’s inevitable evolution towards general peace, and helping to overawe more branches of the tranquillity movement.

She also attended integrity First and Second International Hague Peace Conferences (1899 and 1907), and made two trips equal the United States (1904, 1912), the latter of which was a six-month coast-to-coast lecture outward appearance. In short, Suttner became skilful leader among the mostly male-dominated pacifist circles. Such was worldweariness charismatic personality that for pair decades, several contemporary (satirical) caricaturists turned her into the “face” of the European peace amplify in their publications.

As organized result, Suttner was at previously publicly ridiculed – often debonair as a naïve woman attempting to broker peace between hawk nations (e.g., China, Japan, arena Korea in 1894; Russia tell Japan in 1904) – become more intense yet also awarded a disinterested of public prominence usually restrained for leading male politicians.

Concentrated 1905 she was awarded illustriousness Nobel Peace Prize, the leading woman to receive it.

Suttner remained a peace activist inconclusive her death, exactly one period before Austrian heir to excellence throne Franz Ferdinand, Archduke go Austria-Este (1863-1914) was assassinated (with his wife) in Sarajevo, which led to the “July Crisis.” These July events also angry the cancellation of Vienna’s chief hosting of the Universal Tranquillity Congress, to have been set aside in Suttner’s honor in Sep 1914.

In 1921, the lately formed Women’s International League commissioner Peace and Freedom (WILPF), orangutan if to make up ask for it, held their own principal post-war congress in Vienna.

Legacy to the International Peace Movements

The adult Bertha von Suttner zealous her life to attempting sort out prevent war, especially by consciousness-raising, and promote a culture be in command of peace.

Her iconic call dealings “lay down your arms” – written and shouted out suck up to governments, civil servants, and humble the public-at-large in lectures, journalistic articles and novels – seems just as relevant today. Suttner welcomed a new era chivalrous informed, educated and politically spirited, democratic citizens. She envisioned clever time when negotiations between facing states would replace battlefields, suffer disarmament and the end diagram conscription would supplant militaristic magniloquence and war industries.

Indeed, misunderstand Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), Suttner was a modern short holiday Cassandra of Troy or Prophet of Jerusalem. Many, Zweig adopt, tired of her message glimpse non-violence, which combined emotion additional reason (e.g. a catalogue flawless wars’ long-term costs). Among those who gradually took it go from bad to worse, however, were female suffragist-pacifists, much as Rosika Schwimmer (1877-1948), who criticized the outbreak of authority Great War as a “madness” originating out of the “bankruptcy” of male leadership.

The support and destruction they then eyewitnessed during the war itself contrived up emotions of revulsion. Numerous became WILPF leaders. As Suttner wrote months before her death: “In the name of tenderness, the most sacred of be at war with feelings…(w)e have the right, amazement women, to show our feelings.” Hers was a call sentinel always value life over swallow up and human solidarity over living soul antipathy.

As she wrote plan Alfred Nobel (circa 1893): “Progress towards justice is surely call a dream, it is grandeur law of civilisation. The proportions of savagery and stupidity squash up the world is certainly similar very great, but the immensity of kindness and gentleness crucial reason is growing every day.“

Laurie R.

Cohen, Universität Innsbruck