Bertha von Suttner

Austrian writer and religious leader

• Born: June 9, 1843
• Birthplace: Prague, Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Czech Republic)
• Died: June 21, 1914
• Place of death: Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Austria)

Suttner inspired and organized peace movements and was instrumental in persuading Alfred Nobel to establish the Peace Prize that became named for him. Her novel Lay Down Your Arms was a clarion call for disarmament.

Early Life

Bertha von Suttner was born Countess Kinsky into an old noble Polish family with a long and distinguished military tradition. Her father, Field Marshal Count Joseph Kinsky, died before she was born. On her mother’s side, Kinsky was related to the poet Joseph von Korner. While she was in her teens, she dreamed of a career as an opera singer; she was encouraged in this, but, after a short while, she realized that her talent was insufficient. A precocious child, she read Plato’s works and those of Alexander von Humboldt, a great German scientist, before she was sixteen. From her governesses she learned French and English. Later, she taught herself Italian. Kinsky must have been a beautiful girl. When she was only thirteen years old, a prince wanted to marry her, and in letters she is invariably mentioned as a lovely girl. She was an only and lonely child, and until the age of twelve she had no playmates. This experience reinforced her inclination to live in a world of dreams and fantasies.

After her father’s death, her mother was left with a modest income, but the expenses of Kinsky’s singing lessons and her mother’s compulsive gambling at the fashionable casinos diminished their limited funds. At the age of thirty, Kinsky took a job as a governess with the family of Baron and Baroness von Suttner. Though their youngest son, Arthur, at twenty-three years of age, was seven years younger than Kinsky, the two fell in love. Their romance was eagerly fostered by the girls of the family; they were fond of Bertha and were fascinated by the development of romantic love. It was quite otherwise with the parents. When the romance was discovered, the highly incensed baroness did not lose any time in finding a new, distant position for Kinsky.

This new position was with Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who lived, at the time, in Paris. A bachelor at the age of forty-three, he was looking for a secretary-housekeeper who was also familiar with languages. In his advertisement he wrote, “A very wealthy, cultured, elderly gentleman, living in Paris, desires to find a lady, also of mature years, familiar with languages, as secretary and manager of his household.” Despite her youth, Kinsky undoubtedly fit all the other requirements, for she was hired right away. A week later Nobel had to return to Sweden; the king had summoned him. Kinsky too was called away from Paris. Upon receipt of a telegram from Arthur confessing that he could not live without her, Kinsky hurried to Vienna. There, in great secrecy, they married.

For their honeymoon, which according to Kinsky lasted nine years, they went to the Caucasus in Russia. The invitation had come from a prince, who was one of their friends. Their stay was a curious blend of being both guests and employees of their hosts. At first the prince had hopes of finding employment for Arthur. When that failed, Arthur was employed as an architect and overseer while Bertha gave music and language lessons. When the day’s work was done, they changed their work clothes for evening dresses and tuxedos and mingled on equal footing with the local aristocracy. Arthur started to write articles that were published in the Austrian newspapers. Whether out of envy or the desire to imitate—she herself wrote that she could not decide that—Bertha too began to write. Her first published work was a light piece, an essay of the type known as a feuilleton, and it was signed with a pseudonym, but still it gave her confidence. Filled with the assurance that they could make a living as writers, they were ready to return home. In May, 1885, after nine years, they said farewell to the Caucasus.

Life’s Work

Upon their return, Bertha and Arthur were forgiven for their secret marriage, and they rejoined Arthur’s family. Published two years before their return, Bertha’s book Inventarium einer Seele (1883; inventory of a soul) gave her entrée into literary circles. She soon added two important works to her oeuvre: Daniela Dormes (1886) and Das Maschinenzeitalter: Zukunftsvorlesungen über unsere Zeit (1889). Daniela Dormes in many ways is more a discussion than a novel. In it, however, one can discern Suttner’s philosophical and moral views: She is sympathetic to the plight of the Jews, and she believes in Darwinism as a social force. Das Maschinenzeitalter is a look into the future. Suttner commented that she wrote the book to rid herself of the gloom with which the present filled her. The book was replete with scientific and philosophical themes; in scientific circles there was so much prejudice against the capacity of women as thinkers that a book signed with a woman’s name would not have been read, so Suttner used the pseudonym “Jemand” (anyone).

The turning point of Suttner’s life was approaching. With the money earned by Das Maschinenzeitalter, she and her husband decided to go to Paris. There they again met Nobel, and through him they also met the intellectual and social elite of the city. It was in Paris that Suttner first heard about the existence in London of a society called the International Peace and Arbitration Society. From that moment, she decided to promote it with all her efforts. She realized that her talent lay in writing; she also realized that in order to reach as many people as possible, the novel form would be best.

As a published author, Suttner assumed that the publication of Die Waffen nieder! (1889; Lay Down Your Arms , 1892) would not be a problem. The topic, however, was considered so dangerous that many publishers refused it. Suttner would have liked to have had the book run as a serial in a periodical, but this was refused. A publisher finally accepted the work but demanded that certain parts be cut and others be rewritten. The publisher also wanted to change the title to a less provocative one. Suttner refused. To the astonishment of the publisher, Lay Down Your Arms became a best seller; it was translated into dozens of languages. She received plaudits from Nobel and Leo Tolstoy, among others. Tolstoy compared the book to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and commented that he hoped that just as Stowe’s work had influenced the abolition of slavery, so should Lay Down Your Arms influence the abolition of war.

The success of the book soon engulfed Suttner in a series of peace activities. In 1891, she was elected president of the Austrian Peace Society, and she represented her country at a congress of international peace movements in Rome. The same year, she met a journalist, Alfred Hermann Fried, who also was later to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. The two founded a monthly periodical that bore the same title as Suttner’s book. During the next eight years, this monthly was a powerful instrument in keeping the peace movement before the eyes of the world. Suttner also was occupied with the preparations for the First Hague Peace Conference . The conference aroused great expectations.

The czar of Russia, Nicholas II, had called upon world leaders to discuss efforts toward universal peace. This call was hailed by the champions of peace as a gigantic step toward its achievement. Until that time, pacifists had been considered as dreamers and utopians. This condescending attitude hurt their cause as much as the hostile attitude of the militarists. Jean-Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, commented that now, “whatever may happen, the world will not shriek, ’Utopia!’” “Utopians,” as Suttner noted, was the favorite circumlocution for “crazy fellows.”

At the conference, France was represented by a former prime minister and Great Britain by Julian Pauncefote, the British ambassador to the United States. One of the honorary presidents of the conference was Andrew D. White, the American ambassador to Germany. Among all these glittering personalities, Suttner was feted, admired, and listened to. Ivan Bloch, a Russian journalist, was instrumental in the endeavor to change world opinion to accept disarmament and peace as a real possibility and not merely as a utopian dream. Bloch’s book Budushchaia voina (1898; partial translation as The Future of War, in Its Technical, Economic, and Political Relations , 1899) was widely regarded as being partially responsible for the idea of a peace conference. His thesis was that with the advanced technology of arms and armies the idea that one could wage war without destroying society was “utopian.” Before going to the conference, Bloch had a long interview with the czar.

Suttner also fought against anti-Semitism. Her husband perhaps played a more important role in this fight, but she was his coworker. Anti-Semitism was virulent in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Indeed, one of Adolf Hitler’s chief idols was the anti-Semitic mayor of Vienna. Arthur founded the Union to Combat Anti-Semitism.

In December, 1902, Arthur died. In order to bear her grief, Suttner threw herself into furthering the cause of peace. She wrote, she attended meetings, and she went to conferences. In 1904, she went on a speaking tour in the United States. She met President Theodore Roosevelt, who assured her that universal peace was coming. She was impressed by Philadelphia and its Quaker inhabitants, friends of peace. On her return to Europe, she was greatly encouraged by the way many dominions of the British Empire were about to be given Commonwealth status. She saw a promising future for other states, particularly for her homeland, where the old age of the emperor made people aware of changes that would follow his death. In 1905, she received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the summer of 1914, an International Peace Conference was scheduled to be held in Vienna. In the last week of June of that year, however, a shot rang out in a provincial city in an obscure province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It killed the heir to the throne of the empire as well as his wife. Soon there were millions and millions of other victims; World War I had erupted. Suttner was spared the knowledge of war—she died of stomach cancer a week before the assassinations in Sarajevo.

Significance

Bertha von Suttner united in herself two traits that are rarely found together: idealism and realism. It was her idealism that led to her faith in a world without war. Hundreds before her had that same dream, but Suttner also had the clear-sightedness, the practical sense, and the knowledge of the way the world is directed by statesmen and leaders.

In Suttner’s work, she was helped by her husband, who shared her ideas and was also a writer of some note. Even greater help came to her in the form of the zeitgeist. At the turn of the century, a host of great writers, philosophers, and statesmen were advocating the idea of a peaceful world. The idea was there—in search of a leader. Suttner took the role. The peace conferences she organized, the speaking tours she embarked upon, her book with its noble challenge, and the periodical she helped found all had the effect of making and keeping the world aware that the fight for peace can be as vigorous as its opposite. When Suttner was received by the crowned heads of Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, and when she conferred with a former president and the president of the United States, it was not only a personal triumph but also a victory for the cause of peace. The Nobel Peace Prize and the annual peace conferences that followed the First Hague Peace Conference are testimony to her influence.

Bibliography

Braker, Regina. Weapons of Women Writers: Bertha von Suttner’s “Die Waffen nieder!” as Political Literature in the Tradition of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” New York: Peter Lang, 1995. Examines similarities between Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Lay Down Your Arms. Describes how Suttner and Stowe were influenced by author Leo Tolstoy’s ideas about art, and how both authors sought the role of moral messenger.

Davis, Calvin DeArmond. The United States and the First Hague Peace Conference. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1962. An excellent account of the First Hague Peace Conference with particular emphasis on American participation. Offers a scholarly, lucid presentation of the problems of establishing a Permanent Court of Arbitration.

Hamann, Brigette. Bertha von Suttner: A Life for Peace. Translated by Ann Dubsky, with an introduction by Irwin Abrams. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Traces Suttner’s life and involvement in the peace movement within the context of social and political conditions in Austria on the eve of World War I. Hamann makes use of diaries, letters, and other previously unpublished materials.

Kemp, Beatrix. Woman for Peace: The Life of Bertha von Suttner. Translated by R. W. Last. London: Oswald Wolff, 1972. Kemp had access to the Library of the United Nations in Geneva, where most of the material pertaining to Suttner’s work is now collected. Occasionally laudatory, this nevertheless critical work provides an illuminating look at Suttner’s life and work. The accounts of her lecture tours and the text of her speech in San Francisco in 1912 are valuable. Complete bibliography and index.

Playne, Caroline E. Bertha von Suttner and the Struggle to Avert the World War. London: Allen & Unwin, 1936. The author knew Suttner personally and participated with her in two International Peace Conferences. Contains good anecdotal material. The style is somewhat pedestrian, but the eyewitness accounts are useful. Index, no bibliography.

Suttner, Bertha von. Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life. Boston: Ginn, 1910. Suttner kept a diary, so her memoirs are quite detailed. She gives outstanding sketches of statesmen, writers, and leaders of nations. Index.

Wiener, P. B. “Bertha von Suttner and the Political Novel.” In Essays in German Language, Culture, and Society, edited by Siegbert S. Prawer et al. London: University of London, 1969. A useful and enlightening essay on the essence of the political novel, with special regard to the difference between the political novel and the social novel. Provides a good analysis of Suttner’s main work, Lay Down Your Arms, and compares it to other antiwar novels. The notes following the articles are alone more valuable than many a longer article.