Bertha von Suttner
Bertha von Suttner | |
---|---|
Born | Bertha Sophie Felicitas Gräfin Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau 9 June 1843 |
Died | 21 June 1914 | (aged 71)
Occupation(s) | Pacifist, novelist |
Spouse | Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner |
Awards | Nobel Peace Prize, 1905 |
Signature | |
Bertha Sophie Felicitas Freifrau, and the first Austrian and Czech laureate.
Early life
Bertha Kinský was born on 9 June 1843 at Kinský Palace in the Obecní dvůr (cz) district of Prague.[4] Her parents were the Austrian Lieutenant general (German: Feldmarschall-Leutnant) Franz Michael de Paula Josef Graf Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau (1769–1843), then recently deceased at the age of 75, and his young wife Sophie Wilhelmine von Körner (1815–1884), who was almost fifty years his junior.[5][6]
Her father was a member of the illustrious
For the rest of her life, Bertha faced exclusion from the Austrian high nobility due to her "mixed" descent; for instance, only those with an unblemished aristocratic pedigree back to their great-great-grandparents were eligible for presentation at the imperial court. She was additionally disadvantaged because her father, as a third son, had no great estates or other financial resources to bequeath. Bertha was baptised at Prague's Church of Our Lady of the Snows – not a traditional choice for the aristocracy.[5]
Soon after her birth, Bertha's mother moved to live in Brno near Bertha's guardian, Landgrave Friedrich Michael zu Fürstenberg-Taikowitz (1793–1866). Her older brother, Count Arthur Franz Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau (1827–1906), was sent to a military school at the age of six and subsequently had little contact with the family. In 1855, Bertha's maternal aunt Charlotte (Lotte) Büschel, née von Körner (de) (also a widow), and her daughter Elvira joined the household.[8] Elvira, whose father was a private scholar and whose official guardian, after the death of her father, became Count Johann Carl August von Huyn (de), was of a similar age to Bertha and interested in intellectual pursuits, introducing her cousin to literature and philosophy.[9] Beyond her reading, Bertha gained proficiency in French, Italian and English as an adolescent, under the supervision of a succession of private tutors; she also became an accomplished amateur pianist and singer.[10]
Bertha's mother and aunt, regarding themselves as clairvoyant, went to gamble at Wiesbaden in the summer of 1856, hoping to return with a fortune. Their losses proved so heavy that they were forced to move to Vienna. During this trip, Bertha received a marriage proposal from Prince Philipp zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (1836–1858), third son of Prince August Ludwig zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (de) (Minister of State of the Duchy of Nassau) and his wife, Franziska Allesina genannt von Schweitzer (1802–1878), which was declined due to her young age.[11] The family returned to Wiesbaden in 1859; the second trip proved similarly unsuccessful, and they had to relocate to a small property in Klosterneuburg. Shortly after this, Bertha wrote her first published work, the novella Erdenträume im Monde, which appeared in Die Deutsche Frau. Continuing poor financial circumstances led Bertha to a brief engagement to the wealthy Gustav, Baron Heine von Geldern, 31 years her senior and a member of the banking Heine family (de), whom she came to find unattractive and rejected; her memoirs record her disgusted response to the older man's attempt to kiss her.[10]
In 1864, the family spent the summer at
Tutor in the Suttner household, life in Georgia
Bertha's guardian (Landgrave Friedrich zu Fürstenberg) and her cousin Elvira both died in 1866, and she (now above the typical age of marriage) felt increasingly constrained by her mother's eccentricity and the family's poor financial circumstances.[18] In 1873, she found employment as a tutor and companion to the four daughters of Karl, Freiherr von Suttner, who were aged between 15 and 20. The Suttner family (de) lived in the Innere Stadt of Vienna three seasons of the year, and spent the summer at Castle Harmannsdorf (de) in Lower Austria. She had an affectionate relationship with her four young students, who nicknamed her "Boulotte" (fatty) due to her size, a name she would later adopt as a literary pseudonym in the form "B. Oulot".[19][20]
She soon fell in love with the girls' elder brother,
The newlywed couple eloped to
Arthur and Bertha von Suttner
Arthur and Bertha von Suttner were largely socially isolated in Georgia; their poverty restricted their engagement with high society, and neither ever became fluent speakers of Mingrelian or Georgian. To support themselves, both began writing as a career. While Arthur's writing during this period is dominated by local themes, Suttner's was not similarly influenced by Georgian culture.[27]
In August 1882, Ekaterine Dadiani died. Soon afterwards, the couple decided to move to Tbilisi. There, Arthur took whatever work he could (in accounting, construction and wallpaper design), while Suttner largely concentrated on her writing. She became a correspondent of Michael Georg Conrad, eventually contributing an article to the 1885 edition of his publication Die Gesellschaft. The piece, entitled "Truth and Lies", is a polemic in favour of the naturalism of Émile Zola.[28][29] Her first significant political work, Inventarium einer Seele ("Inventory of the Soul"), was published in Leipzig in 1883. In this work, Suttner takes a pro-disarmament, progressive stance, arguing for the inevitability of world peace due to technological advancement; a possibility also considered by her friend Nobel due to the increasingly deterrent effect of more powerful weapons.[citation needed]
In 1884, Suttner's mother died, leaving the couple with further debts.
Bertha found refuge in her marriage with Arthur, of which she remarked that "the third field of my feelings and moods lay within our married happiness. In this was my peculiarly inalienable home, my refuge for all possible conditions of life, […] and so the leaves of my diary are full not only of political domestic records of all kinds, but also of memoranda of our gay little jokes, our confidential enjoyable walks, our uplifting reading, our hours of music together, and our evening games of chess. To us personally nothing could happen. We had each other – that was everything."[33]
Peace activism
After their return to Austria, Suttner continued her journalism and concentrated on peace and war issues, corresponding with the French philosopher Ernest Renan and influenced by the International Arbitration and Peace Association founded by Hodgson Pratt in 1880.
In 1889, Suttner became a leading figure in the peace movement with the publication of her pacifist novel,
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.
Though her personal contact with Alfred Nobel had been brief, she corresponded with him until his death in 1896, and it is believed that Von Suttner was a major influence on his decision to include a peace prize among those prizes provided in his will. Bertha von Suttner was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in the fifth term on 10 December 1905, together with her comrade, the legal scholar Tobias Asser (1838–1913) for their help in developing an international order based on peace rather than war. The presentation took place on 18 April 1906 in Kristiania.
In 1907, Von Suttner was the only woman to attend the Second Hague Peace Conference, which mainly pertained to the law of war. Von Suttner was actually highly critical of the 1907 conference, and warned of a war to come. When accepting her Nobel Peace prize, she said: "(…) whether our Europe will become a showpiece of ruins and failure, or whether we can avoid this danger and so enter sooner the coming era of secure peace and law in which a civilisation of unimagined glory will develop. The many aspects of this question are what the second Hague Conference should be discussing rather than the proposed topics concerning the laws and practices of war at sea, the bombardment of ports, towns, and villages, the laying of mines, and so on. The contents of this agenda demonstrate that, although the supporters of the existing structure of society, which accepts war, come to a peace conference prepared to modify the nature of war, they are basically trying to keep the present system intact".[35]
Around this time, she also crossed paths with Anna Bernhardine Eckstein, another German champion of world peace, who influenced the agenda of the Second Hague Peace Conference. A year later she attended the International Peace Congress in London, where she first met Caroline Playne, an English anti-war activist who would later write the first biography of Suttner.[36]
In the run-up to World War I, Suttner continued to campaign against international armament. In 1911 she became a member of the advisory council of the Carnegie Peace Foundation.[37] In the last months of her life, while suffering from cancer, she helped organise the next Peace Conference, intended to take place in September 1914. However, the conference never took place, as she died of cancer on 21 June 1914, and seven days later the heir to her nation's throne, Franz Ferdinand was killed, triggering World War I.
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!) [38] conceiving peace as a natural state impaired by the human aberrances of war and militarism. As a result, she argued that a right to peace could be demanded under international law and was necessary in the context of an evolutionary Darwinist conception of history. Suttner was a respected journalist, with one historian describing her as "a most perceptive and adept political commentator".[38]
Writing
As a career writer, Suttner often had to write novels and novellas that she did not believe in or really want to write, to support herself. However, even in those novels there are traces of her political ideals; often, the romantic heroes would fall in love upon realising they were both fighting for the same ideals, usually peace and tolerance.[according to whom?]
To promote her writing career and ideals, she used her connections in aristocracy and friendships with wealthy individuals, such as Alfred Nobel, to gain access to international heads of state, and also to gain popularity for her writing. To increase the financial success of her writing, she used a male pseudonym early in her career. In addition, Suttner often worked as a journalist to publicise her message or promote her own books, events, and causes.
As Tolstoy noted and others have since agreed, there is a strong similarity between Suttner and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Both Beecher Stowe and Suttner "were neither simply writers of popular entertainment nor authors of tendentious propaganda.... [They] used entertainment for idealistic purposes."[39] For Suttner, peace and acceptance of all individuals and all peoples was the greatest ideal and theme.
Suttner also wrote about other issues and ideals. Two common issues in her work, apart from pacifism, are religion and gender.
Religion
There are two main issues with religion that Suttner often wrote about. She had a disdain for the spectacle and pomp of some religious practices. In a scene in Lay Down Your Arms she highlighted the odd theatricality of some religious practices. In the scene, the emperor and empress are washing the feet of normal citizens to show they are as humble as Jesus, but they invite everyone to witness their show of humility and enter the hall in a dramatic fashion. The protagonist Martha remarks that it was "indeed a sham washing."[40]
Another issue prominent in much of her writing is the idea that war is righteously for God, and leaders often use religion as a pretext for war. Suttner criticised this reasoning on the grounds that it placed the state as the important entity to God rather than the individual, thereby making dying in battle more glorious than other forms of death or surviving a war. Much of Lay Down Your Arms discusses this topic.
This type of religious thinking also leads to segregation and fighting based on religious differences, which Bertha and Arthur von Suttner refused to accept. As a devout
Gender
Suttner is often considered a leader in the women's liberation movement.[42]
Von Suttner broke through
In Lay Down Your Arms, the protagonist Martha often clashes with her father on this issue. Martha does not want her son to play with toy soldiers and be indoctrinated to the masculine ideas of war. Martha's father attempts to put Martha back in the female gendered box by suggesting that the son will not need to ask for approval from a woman, and also states that Martha should marry again because women her age should not be alone.[40]
This was not simply because she insisted that women are equal to men, but that she was able to tease out how sexism affects both men and women. Like Martha being placed in a female structured gender box, the character of Tilling is also placed in the male stereotyped box and affected by that. The character even discusses it, saying, "we men have to repress the instinct of self-preservation. Soldiers have also to repress the compassion, the sympathy for the gigantic trouble which invades both friend and foe; for next to cowardice, what is most disgraceful to us is all sentimentality, all that is emotional."[40]
Legacy
Although Suttner was not financially successful during her lifetime, her work has remained influential for those involved in the peace movement.[citation needed]
- She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905
She has also been commemorated on several coins and stamps:
- She was selected as a main motif for a high value collectors' coin: the James Watt.
- A commemorative silver 10 euro coin was issued in Germany in honor of the centennial of her Nobel Prize.[43]
- She is depicted on the Austrian 2 euro coin, and was pictured on the old Austrian 1,000 schilling bank note.
- She was commemorated on a 1965 Austrian postage stamp and a 2005 German postage stamp.
- On 10 December 2019, Google celebrated her with a Google Doodle.[44]
- There is a statue in her honor in Vienna and one in Graz.
On film
- Die Waffen nieder, by Holger Madsen and Carl Theodor Dreyer. Released by Nordisk Films Kompagni in 1914.[45][46]
- No Greater Love (German: Herz der Welt), a 1952 film[47] has Bertha as the main character.
TV
- .
Works translated into English
- Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life. Vol. 1. Boston; London: Published for the International School of Peace by Ginn and Co. 1910. OCLC 1000449.
- Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life. Vol. 2. Boston; London: Published for the International School of Peace by Ginn and Co. 1910. OCLC 1000449.
- When Thoughts Will Soar: a romance of the immediate future. Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1914. OCLC 975993521.
- Lay Down Your Arms: The autobiography of Martha von Tilling. Translated by Holmes, T. (2nd ed.). New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 1914 [First published 1906]. OCLC 944424434.
- The Barbarization of the Sky. Mount Pleasant, Michigan (USA): The Bertha von Suttner Project. 2016. OCLC 993005782. Archived from the originalon 2021-05-17. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
See also
- Pacifism
- List of peace activists
- List of Austrians
- List of Austrian writers
- List of female Nobel laureates
References
Citations and notes
- .
- ^ German: Gräfin Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau
- ^ List of female recipients of the Nobel Prize
- ^ Hamann, p. 1
- ^ a b Hamann, p. 2
- ^ 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.
- ^ Kempf, pp. 7–8.
- ^ Playne, p. 16
- ^ Hamann p. 5
- ^ a b Hamann pp. 9–10
- ^ Hamann pp. 5–6
- ^ Hamann p. 11
- ^ https://www.genealogics.org/relationship.php?altprimarypersonID=I00364947&savedpersonID=&secondpersonID=I00006398&maxrels=1&disallowspouses=1&generations=8&tree=LEO&primarypersonID=I00364947
- ^ Playne, p. 29
- ^ Kemf, p. 9
- ^ Hamann p. 13
- ^ Hamann p. 15
- ^ Playne, p. 28
- ^ Hamann pp. 18–19
- ^ a b Playne, p. 45
- ^ Hamann, p. 24
- ^ Hamann, p. 26
- ^ Hamann, p. 27
- ^ Hamann pp. 30–31
- ^ Hamann, pp. 32–33
- ^ Hamann, pp. 34–37
- ^ Hamann, p. 37
- ^ Kempf, pp. 15–16
- ^ Hamann, pp. 40–41
- ^ a b c Hamann, pp. 42–43
- ^ Suttner could not recall the journalist's full name when writing her memoirs, and his identity is unknown.
- ^ Hamann, p. 45
- ^ ISBN 978-1147075816.
- .
- ^ a b "International Women's Day: Janne Nijman puts the spotlight on peace activist Bertha von Suttner (1843 - 1914)". Asser Institute. 8 March 2019. Archived from the original on May 3, 2024.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/38530. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ 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. Vol. 32 (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company. p. 628.
- ^ ISBN 0-08-032685-4, (vol. 3, pp. 201–204).
- .
- ^ ISBN 978-1514744314.
- ISBN 978-0840764508.
- ISSN 0277-5395.
- ^ "100 years of the Nobel Prize awarded to Bertha von Suttner, 10 Euro silver coin 2005, Proof". Retrieved 4 July 2022.
- ^ "Celebrating Bertha von Suttner". Google. 10 December 2019.
- .
- ^ Ned Med Vaabnene (1914) – IMDb
- ^ Herz der Welt (1952) – IMDb
Bibliography
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 171.
- Playne, Caroline Elizabeth (1936). Bertha von Suttner and the World War. George Allen Unwin.
- Irwin Abrams: "Bertha von Suttner and the Nobel Peace Prize". In: Journal of Central European Affairs. Bd. 22, 1962, S. 286–307
- Kemf, Beatrix (1972). Suffragette for Peace: Life of Bertha Von Suttner. Oswald Wolff. ISBN 978-0854962556.
- Laurence, Richard R. "Bertha von Suttner and the peace movement in Austria to World War I." Austrian History Yearbook 23 (1992): 181-201.
- Lengyel, Emil (1975). And All Her Paths Were Peace: The Life of Bertha von Suttner. Thomas Nelson, Inc. ISBN 978-0840764508.
- Hamann, Brigitte (1996). Bertha von Suttner – a life for peace. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0815603764.
- ISBN 3-492-23784-3
- Laurie R. Cohen (Hrsg.): „Gerade weil Sie eine Frau sind…“. Erkundungen über Bertha von Suttner, die unbekannte Friedensnobelpreisträgerin. Braumüller, Wien 2005, ISBN 3-7003-1522-8.
- Maria Enichlmair: Abenteurerin Bertha von Suttner: Die unbekannten Georgien-Jahre 1876 bis 1885. Ed. Roesner, Maria Enzersdorf 2005, ISBN 3-902300-18-3.
- Beatrix Müller-Kampel (Hrsg.): „Krieg ist der Mord auf Kommando“. Bürgerliche und anarchistische Friedenskonzepte. Bertha von Suttner und ISBN 3-9806353-7-6.
- Beatrix Kempf: "Bertha von Suttner und die „bürgerliche“ Friedensbewegung". In: Friede – Fortschritt – Frauen. Friedensnobelpreisträgerin Bertha von Suttner auf Schloss Harmannsdorf. LIT-Verlag, Wien 2007, S. 45 ff.
- Valentin Belentschikow: Bertha von Suttner und Russland (= Vergleichende Studien zu den slavischen Sprachen und Literaturen.). Lang, Frankfurt am Main u.a. 2012, ISBN 978-3-631-63598-8.
- Simone Peter: "Bertha von Suttner (1843–1914)". In: Bardo Fassbender, Anne Peters (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, S. 1142–1145 (Vorschau).
- Stefan Frankenberger (Hrsg.): Der unbekannte Soldat – Zum Andenken an Bertha von Suttner. Mono, Wien 2014, ISBN 978-3-902727-52-7
External links
- Bertha von Suttner on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture, April 18, 1906 The Evolution of the Peace Movement
- Bertha Freifrau (Baroness) von Suttner on nobel-winners.com
- Another biography on Suttner
- Bertha von Suttner, "Visit to Alfred Nobel Archived 2017-01-09 at the Wayback Machine," in Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Boston: Ginn & Co., 1910.
- The Bertha Von Suttner Project (repository of print and multimedia resources in English)
- 2005 – the Bertha von Suttner Year
- Works by Bertha von Suttner at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Bertha von Suttner at Internet Archive
- Works by Bertha von Suttner at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Works by Bertha von Suttner at Open Library
- Bertha von Suttner (1910). Memoirs of Bertha Von Suttner. Ginn & co.
- Online text of "Lay down Your Arms", archive.org
- "Baroness Bertha von Suttner; Author of "Lay Down Your Arms" and Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize". New York Times Review of Books. February 5, 1911. pp. BR61. (PDF of full review of Memoirs)
- Claus Bernet (2005). "Bertha von Suttner". In Bautz, Traugott (ed.). Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German). Vol. 24. Nordhausen: Bautz. cols. 1435–1471. ISBN 3-88309-247-9.
- Memoirs at archive.org (1910 translation)