"Stand up, unite! Don't always let us few old women to whom no one listens do everything."

Bertha von Suttner, 1913

INTRODUCTION

Bertha von Suttner lived at a time of social upheaval in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Public life defined by church and the imperial government was changing. The clash of polarities between tradition and the new had transformed the city which gave birth to emergent modernism. The late 19th century saw a re-evaluation of traditional gender roles. Bertha von Suttner made use of the new cultural attitudes and became the spokeswoman of the women’s movement. She did not only advocate global peace but rejected nationalism and xenophobia. She was a women’s rights activist which, in the second half of the 19th century, was very unusual for the child of an aristocratic family. She rebelled against the conservative conventions of the time with its many supporters in the state, parties and military whom she permanently challenged.
Bertha von Suttner’s literary works show a woman who courageously spoke out against nationalism, chauvinism and militarism. Her works show a woman who challenged the prevailing themes and conventions of the 19th century and male-dominated literature of the time which focused on war and heroism.

THE STORY

BERTHA VON SUTTNER (1843-1914)

“Let us fight against apathy: Against philistine indifference”

Bertha von Suttner (née Countess Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau) is a synonym for pacifism and unconditional commitment to peace. She was the first woman to be granted the Nobel Peace Prize (1905) which she actually invented. She became a close friend of the Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) who owned dynamite-producing factories. From 1875 Bertha von Suttner maintained an extensive correspondence with Alfred Nobel and she is given credit for inspiring him to establish the Nobel Peace Prize.

Family

Baroness Bertha Sophia Felicitas von Suttner Countess von Chinic und Tettau (pseudonyms B. Oulot and von Jemand) was born in Prague on 9 June 1843. Her father was from the Kinsky family, her mother from the family of the freedom fighter and poet Theodor Körner.

Bertha von Suttner was the daughter of Austrian Franz Josef Michael Count Kinsky von Wechinitz and Tettau (1769-1843), retired imperial-royal Lieutenant Field Marshal and privy counsellor. He died at the age of 73 shortly before her birth. Bertha’s father and his four brothers followed the tradition of the House of Kinsky and were generals.

Bertha’s mother, Sophie Wilhelmine Countess Kinsky (1815-1884) née Körner and daughter of a Captain of the Cavalry in the Habsburg Imperial Army, was eighteen years old when she married Count Kinsky. Suttner’s maternal grandfather, Theodor Körner, was well known as a freedom fighter, writer of light comedies and poet to the court at the Vienna Burgtheater. At the wish of the Kinsky family, Bertha von Suttner’s mother gave up her career as an opera singer.

Arthur Kinsky, Bertha’s brother, had to give up his position as a lieutenant because of a lung complaint. An appanage from his father soon allowed him to move to Spalato, Dalmatia.

Bertha von Kinsky grew up with her mother Sophie. Bertha’s mother came from a family that belonged to an untitled nobility. Only those with an unblemished aristocratic pedigree going back to their great-great-grandparents were eligible for presentation at the imperial court. She was excluded from the aristocratic nobility.

Bertha and her mother moved to Brno to Bertha’s guardian, Landgrave Friedrich Fürstenberg where she was taught by private tutors. She gained proficiency in French, English and Italian and spoke these languages fluently which proved to be a great advantage in her work later on. Apart from languages she also became an accomplished amateur pianist and singer and displayed a great interest in classical literature, science and philosophy which, in those days, was quite unusual for young women. Beatrix Kempf (1965:9 ff) writes about Suttner: “(…) through intensive study and profound knowledge, she was familiar with important scientific trends and literature of the time. Until the end, Suttner kept a record of the titles she had chosen for her reading, including scientific works, literary works, and many Austrian daily newspapers.”

Governess and tutor / Alfred Nobel

In her private life Bertha Kinsky did not accept many of the conventions of the time. The young countess turned down a few marriage proposals. She worked as a governess and tutor for the Karl von Suttner family. But the parents did not approve when the 30-year-old Countess Kinsky and the 23-year-old son of the family, Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner (1850-1902), fell in love and Bertha had to leave the house.

In 1875 Bertha replied to an advertisement in the Wiener Zeitung, which she speaks about in her memoirs: “Wealthy, highly educated, elderly gentleman seeks lady of mature age, versed in languages, as secretary and supervisor of household.” (Memoirs 1909: 131).

The elderly gentleman was Alfred Nobel and in 1875 Bertha went to Paris to work as Nobel’s secretary. Her memoirs only hint at whether Nobel made romantic overtures: when Alfred Nobel asked Bertha Kinsky whether she was unattached she truthfully replied that she was not. The two formed a life-long friendship. After the brief encounter in Paris, they only met two or maybe three more times but they maintained an extensive correspondence (Biedermann, Engelgard, 2001)

Secret Marriage and Elopement to Georgia

Bertha von Suttner is said to have only stayed in Paris for ten days. After she decided against a romance with Alfred Nobel, she returned to Vienna and secretly married Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner who was seven years her junior. His parents disapproved of the marriage but Bertha and Arthur were married from 1876 until Arthur’s death in 1902. His parents were opposed to their relationship and the couple eloped to Georgia where they lived for almost a decade (from 1876 to 1885). Their life in Georgia was marked by intellectual discourse and debate as well as financial hardship and they were largely socially isolated. To support themselves they started writing articles, essays travel reports and novels. Their early works and novels were written in Tiflis and published under the pseudonym of B. Oulot.

When they lived in the Caucasus (present-day Georgia) Bertha had not yet taken up her role as a pacifist and activist. Her politicising process and involvement in the subject of war and peace started after her return from the Caucasus in 1885. It was then that her intellectual approach to the subject of peace began. She was particularly inspired by the British theories of evolution at the end of the 19th century (Enichlmair 2005, Thallmann 2017).

Bertha von Suttners idea of peace education, principles of education and women´s rights

In her political writings Bertha von Suttner stresses the great importance of education. She strongly believes in the power of education and its role in fostering peace. She promoted education as a means to overcome prejudice and prevent violence. Education was thus one of the means which could help to change perceptions and attitudes, just like the newly founded German and Austrian peace movements. Suttner’s alternatives for peace education begin with:

– fundamental criticism of the education system and

– specific peace education activities

Two books in particular show her concept of education: The essay “The Machine Age. Lectures on the Future of Our Time” (1889, 1899, 3rd edition) radically criticises the school system. And the novel Lay Down Your Arms! (1889) is a tool for peace education.

Criticism of the education system

Suttner discusses a clear connection between militarism and women in society: she believes that bringing up boys and girls differently creates a culture of war and violence. Young men are brought up to be heroes, while girls are assigned the task of encouraging, rewarding, and consoling these heroes. Bertha von Suttner sees a way out in free education, which she believes is the key to independent individuals: “Education is power, education is freedom, (…)”.

By “free education,” she means above all “school programs whose content should reflect the current state of scientific knowledge and be free of any religious spirit” (cf. novel High Life 1886, 1902, p.112). The author was very critical of educational institutions of her time linked to the church or military and lamented the gap between the state of science and what was taught at schools:

“Lack of freedom is so closely linked to lack of education everywhere that the best way for educational institutions to keep people in chains has always been to keep them as ignorant as possible. Hence the instinctive aversion to female knowledge on the part of men; to education of the lower classes on the part of the upper classes; to enlightenment in general on the part of priests, these jailers of reason” (The Machine Age. The Women, pp. 91-137, quoted in Thalmann 2017, p. 21 and p. 113).

Bertha von Suttner also criticized girls’ education and upbringing in the German Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy, the main goal of which was to ensure that girls become good wives. She explicitly objects to educational programs whose goal is to reinforce gender characteristics and fit (gender) stereotypes. The key words for girls’ education were domesticity and motherliness but for boys, mathematics and the pursuit of achievement were important. The education of girls was considered a family matter – girls were to be educated by their mothers while the education of sons from middle-class families was intensified and differentiated according to the requirements of the military and the professional world.

The novel Lay down your arms! – explores of the themes of war and peace

Lay Down Your Arms –with these three powerful words Bertha von Suttner became internationally famous before the First World War. Her novel, first published in 1889, for which Bertha von Suttner was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905, criticises society and stories of glory. To this day, the name Bertha von Suttner is synonymous with pacifism and unconditional commitment to peace.

What is so special about Bertha von Suttner’s novel? What is this story about, which was intended to move and provoke readers and brought Bertha von Suttner international fame and recognition as the most famous woman of her time? What led her to having the idea of writing the novel and founding a peace society?

The book is an extremely emotional novel. The novel dramatises the life of a woman whose life is destroyed by war, effectively making her a war-widow twice over. The book describes how family and friends suffered from devastation during and after wars. Bertha von Suttner wanted her novel to touch the hearts of her readers. That is why she combines her ideas of peace with the moving love story between Martha and her second husband, Baron von Tilling – who is very similar to her husband Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner (1850-1902).

In 1887, after her return from the Caucasus, Bertha von Suttner learned of the existence of national peace societies at the home of the writer Alphonse Daudet in Paris and of the plans of the Englishman Hodgson Pratt to establish an international court of arbitration to resolve conflicts between individual states peacefully. She felt that it was urgently necessary to promote the idea of peace and to inform the general public. And so, in 1888, she began preparations for a novel that would appeal especially to women, as she was convinced that peace issues should not only be propagated by men. She chose the genre of a novel in the form of a fictional autobiography. “I wanted to put not only what I thought, but what I felt, felt passionately, into my book. I wanted to express the pain that the idea of war burned into my soul,” she later stated in her memoirs (1909, p. 215). She did extensive research work for the book. She studied “thick volumes of history books, old newspapers, archive material, reports from war correspondents and military doctors, and listened to the stories of those who had participated in the war” (Hamann, 2015, p. 87ff.).

Although Suttner emphasized that her commitment was not based on personal experiences of war, as she writes in her memoirs (1909, p. 10), one wish in particular motivated this novel: to stop the wheel of war! (cf. Birkhan, 2007). The literary form of the novel allows fictional autobiographical notes, historical letters, and fragments of documents to be woven together into a historical narrative. The story takes place between 1857 and 1889 mainly in Vienna, Grumitz in Lower Austria, the fortress of Olmütz on the front in Bohemia, and the city of Paris. The novel Lay Down Your Arms! traces the path of Baroness Martha Tilling, who changes from being a carefree wife into a staunch opponent of war.

Who else in the 19th century spoke or wrote about war in this way? In twenty-five years of peace work up to the outbreak of World War I, Bertha von Suttner’s efforts laid the foundation for numerous peace organisations. She organised a large number of peace congresses and worked actively in the First Hague Peace Conference in The Hague (1899). She was also involved in the board of the Federation of Austrian Women’s Associations, founded in 1902. She travelled throughout Europe and went on two lecture tours in the USA to spread the idea of peace.

Bertha von Suttner died on 21 June 1914, in Vienna. One week after her death, the Austrian heir to the throne and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo (28 June 1914). One month later, Austria’s Emperor Franz Joseph declared war on Serbia (28 July 1914). The First World War claimed over ten million lives and lasted four years.

During the First World War, the activities of the Austrian Peace Society were banned and publication of the magazine Friedenswarte was discontinued. It was not until 1919 that the Hague Peace Conference was convened and the League of Nations was founded. However, in twenty-five years of peace work up to the outbreak of the First World War, Suttner’s work laid the foundation for numerous peace organizations: the League of Nations, the UN Security Council, the Human Rights Court in The Hague – and for civil society peace work worldwide.

The novel as a tool for peace and education

After the publication of the novel Lay Down Your Arms!, Bertha von Suttner worked tirelessly, together with her fellow campaigners, for:

– an immediate end to the arms race,

– minimising government military spending and

– the establishment of international arbitration tribunals for the peaceful resolution of bilateral conflicts.

The novel Lay Down Your Arms! is a tool for peace education. This is particularly evident in the life story of the protagonist Martha. The novel can be regarded as a peace education program (cf. Wintersteiner, 2007):

– because the novel, as a bildungsroman, criticises militarism,

– because its language and structure follow a model of implicit “peace education”,

– and because its popularity contributes to the idea of peace.

Examples of peace education in the novel Lay Down Your Arms! are:

– Martha, the female protagonist, argues against war in discussions with family members.

– In these discussions, various arguments for and against war are discussed, with the argumentation conducted through a polyphony of opinions and diversity of speech.

– Readers can examine and revise their own views in the process (quoted from Biedermann 1999, p. 239).

Overall, the success of the book contributed to the spread of the idea of peace and the peace movement. In 1896, a popular paperback edition was published at the price of one German mark (“penny novel”). Hedwig Pötting adapted the book for young people, which was first published in 1897 under the title of Martha’s Diary.

Bertha von Suttner and the women’s movement

For Bertha von Suttner, “women’s rights” were closely linked to the overall development of the women’s movement. Point by point she addressed the deep-rooted prejudices against women, which continue to have at least a latent effect to this day: for her, education and upbringing were the most important components for the liberation of women. Only then would women be able to pursue a career, participate in public life, and also become financially independent.

However, the demands of Bertha von Suttner and the independent women’s movements went far beyond the material basis. Women wanted human and civil rights for women to become reality, personal fulfilment, emancipation of the individual, and the end of traditional role models. Bertha von Suttner saw women’s rights as a necessary prerequisite and part of social progress. She demanded that women have access to education, be able to work in professions of their choice and be financially independent. She demanded voting rights for women (which were not introduced in Austria and Germany until 1918). She supported the right to divorce.

Bertha von Suttner’s resistance to the inequality of women in education and the workplace began long before the worldwide success of her novel Lay Down Your Arms! The writer used her novels and stories to address social gender differences and the associated discrimination against women and girls. She addressed issues that focused on the exclusion of women from science and denounced what is now referred to as the “glass ceiling” for women’s careers. She took a stand on gender-specific inequalities and feminist alliance policies.

Bertha von Suttner’s political demands were linked to the women’s and peace associations that had existed since the mid-19th century. Women’s organisations had existed in the German-speaking part of the Habsburg Monarchy since the revolution of 1848/1849 and focused primarily on improving educational and employment opportunities for women and on female workers’ rights.

For Bertha von Suttner, education and the transfer of knowledge always had a political dimension. Together with many of her fellow campaigners of the time, she called for the abolition of gender barriers in the education system.

There were other women involved in the movement, for example Marianne Hainisch (principal of the first high school for girls), Rosa Mayreder, and Auguste Fickert. Apart from granting women the right to attend university, her other demands were only generally implemented after the First World War

Summary: Important milestones

1893 – Contacts with Auguste Fickert (1855–1910), founder of the bourgeois radical Allgemeiner Österreichischer Frauenverein (AÖF), (General Austrian Women’s Association).

1902 – Member of the board of the Bund österreichischer Frauenvereine (Federation of Austrian Women’s Associations) founded in 1893, in cooperation with Marianne Hainisch. This association, which mainly concentrated on Vienna, represented a broad political program that included issues of education, marriage reform, reform of the electoral legislation, and the change of and improvement in women’s working conditions. The association also provided legal advice for women (cf. Rath, 2016).

1904 – Participation in the International Women’s Conference in Berlin, participation in peace demonstration outside the Philharmonie. Lecture “Nein, es schweigt nicht mehr!” (No, no more silence) (cf. Hamann 2015, pp. 279-282, footnote 35).

1904 – First lecture tour in the USA: Bertha von Suttner speaks to local women’s organisations (cf. Cohen, 2005).

1911 – Close collaboration with Marianne Hainisch, founder of girls’ high schools and the Austrian Women’s Employment Association.

1912 – Second lecture tour in the USA: Suttner again speaks to peace and women’s organizations in American cities.

Literature

Birkhan, Ingvild (2007). Das entscheidende Werk: die Waffen nieder! Eine Lebensgeschichte. S.71-79: In: Friede-Fortschritt-Frauen. Jubiläum für die Friedensnobelpreisträgerin Bertha von Suttner. LIT Verlag. Wien.

Biedermann, Edelgard (1999). Nicht nur Die Waffen nieder!: Bertha von Suttner. In: Karin Tebben (Hrsg.): Deutschsprachige Schriftstellerinnen des Fin de Siècle. Wissenschaftliche Buchgemeinschaft. Darmstadt.

Biedermann, Edelgard (2001). “Chère Baronne et Amie, Cher monsieur et ami”. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Alfred Nobel und Bertha von Suttner. Georg Olms Verlag. Hildesheim.

Cohen, Laurie (2005).  Einleitung (S. 1-14). In: Cohen, Laurie (Hrsg.): “Gerade weil sie eine Frau sind…”. Erkundungen über Bertha von Suttner, 2005. Braumüller Verlag. Wien.

Enichlmair, Maria (2005). Abenteurerin Bertha von Suttner. Die unbekannten Georgien-Jahre 1876 bis 1885. Roesner Verlag. Maria Enzersdorf bei Wien.

Götz, Christian (1996). Die Rebellin Bertha von Suttner. Botschaften für unsere Zeit. Klein & Blechinger. Dortmund.

Hamann, Brigitte (2015). Bertha von Suttner. Kämpferin für den Frieden. Piper. München und Zürich.

Kempf, Beatrix (1964). Bertha von Suttner. Das Lebensbild einer Großen Frau. Schriftstellerin. Politikerin. Journalistin. Österreichischer Bundesverlag. Wien.

Stalfort, Anne (2000). Das Maschinenzeitalter und Der Menschheit Hochgedanken. Bertha von Suttners literarische Utopien. In: Bei Gefahr des Untergangs. Phantasien des Aufbrechens. Festschrift für Irmgard Roebling. Hrsg. von Ina Brueckel, Dörte Fuchs, Rita Morien und Margarete Sander. Königshausen & Neumann. Würzburg.

Steffahn, Harald (1998). Bertha von Suttner. Reinbek bei Hamburg.

Van den Dungen, Peter (2007). The political Engagement of Bertha von Suttner. Friede – Fortschritt – Frauen. Friedensnobelpreisträgerin Bertha von Suttner auf Schloss Harmannsdorf.  In: Friede-Fortschritt-Frauen. Jubiläum für die Friedensnobelpreisträgerin Bertha von Suttner. LIT Verlag. Wien.

Van den Dungen, Peter (2021). Bertha von Suttner’s anti-war novel in French – A Bas les Armes! (1899). The late and troublesome birth of a non-bestseller. French Historical Studies, Duke University, USA (submitted).

Thalmann, Eveline (2017).  Bertha von Suttner als Soziologin. In: Zeitschrift für Literatur und Theatersoziologie, Jg. 10. Sonderband 4, Lithes.

Wintersteiner, Werner (2007). Die Waffen nieder! – ein friedenspolitisches Programm? Friedenserziehung in Österreich-Ungarn und im Deutschen Reich am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkriegs. In: Friede-Fortschritt-Frauen. Jubiläum für die Friedensnobelpreisträgerin Bertha von Suttner. LIT Verlag. Wien.

Zweig, Stefan ([1944]1982). Die Welt von gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers. Fischer Verlag. Frankfurt am Main.

Works by Bertha von Suttner

1886 High Life (Erstveröffentlichung unter dem Pseudonym B. Oulot).

1889 Die Waffen nieder! Eine Lebensgeschichte. Ohne Jahreszahl. Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck.

1889 Das Maschinenzeitalter. Zukunftsvorlesungen über unsere Zeit. Die Frauen. Nachdruck der 3. Auflage. Von 1899. Düsseldorf: Zwiebelzwerg 1983, S. 91-137.

1892-1899 “Die Waffen nieder!” Monatszeitschrift (Hrsg.). Mitteilungen, S. 17.

1902 Marthas Kinder

1902 “Die Waffen nieder!“- Teil II.

1902 High Life. [1886 als B. Oulot], Pierson, Dresden (3.Aufl.).

1909 Rüstung und Überrüstung. in: Bertha von Suttner: Der Kampf um die Vermeidung des Weltkrieges 1917. Band 1. Berlin.

1909 Bertha von Suttner. Memoiren. [1909] 2015. Europäischer Literaturverlag; 1. Edition.

1912 Die Barbarisierung der Luft. Berlin.

Online Quellen/ Links

https://austria-forum.org/af/Wissenssammlungen/Essays/Vermischtes/ letzter Zugriff: 20.04.2020

https://www.dfg-vk.de/unsere-geschichte/geschichte letzter Zugriff: 05.06.2020

Zitat im Header nach: Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europäers. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1982, S. 243.

Autorin: Mag. Dr. Adelheid Pichler, Bertha von Suttner Privatuniversität St. Pölten GmbH

Übersetzung: Patricia van den Brink

Kontakt: info@fritz-bauer-forum.de

www.suttneruni.at