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Bertha von Suttner and the Peace Movement in Austria to World War I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2009

Richard R. Laurence
Affiliation:
Professor of History at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824.

Abstract

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Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 1992

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References

1 Wank, Solomon, “The Austrian Peace Movement and the Habsburg Ruling Elite, 1906–1914,” in Peace Movements and Political Cultures, ed. Chatfield, Charles and Dungen, Peter van den (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 4063Google Scholar; idem, “Diplomacy against the Peace Movement: The Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office and the Second Hague Conference of 1907,” in Doves and Diplomats: Foreign Offices and Peace Movements in Europe and America in the Twentieth Century, ed. Solomon Wank (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1978), 55–84; Hamann, Brigitte, “Pazifismus in Wien um 1900,” in Wien urn 1900, ed. Berner, Peter, Brix, Emil, and Mantl, Wolfgang (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 1986), 226–31Google Scholar; and Richard R. Laurence, “The Peace Movement in Austria, 1867–1914,” in Wank, ed., Doves and Diplomats, 21–41

2 The Austrian constitution consisted of a series of Staatsgrundgesetze, or fundamental laws, enacted on December 21, 1867. They are contained in the official Reichsgesetzblatt für das Kaiserthum Österreich (RGB), Jahrgang 1867 (Vienna, 1867), LXI. Stück, pp. 389–407, consisting of laws 141 through 147. The notorious Paragraph 14 is part of Law 141. Laws 142 and 144 made up the constitution's bill of rights. Article 20 of Law 142 provided for suspension, under specified conditions, of most of the essential provisions of the bill of rights: freedom of speech, press, assembly, secrecy of correspondence, and freedom from arbitrary house search and arbitrary arrest. Two subsequently enacted statutes, Law 66 of May 5, 1869, and Law 120 of May 23, 1873, spelled out in further details the suspension of civil liberties during times of emergency, when Paragraph 14 was invoked. The legal basis for the imposition of martial law on the civilian population is found in the Penal Code (Strafprozessordnung) of May 23, 1873, RGB Nr. 119. See discussion in Rulf, Friedrich, “Standrecht,” in Österreichische Staatswörterbuch. Handbuch des gesamten österreichischen öffentlichen Rechtes, ed. Mischler, Ernst and Ulbrich, Joseph, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Vienna: Alfred Holder, 1905–9), 4:465–66Google Scholar.

3 RGB Nr. 134 (November 15, 1867), Paragraph 6.

4 Ibid., Paragraphs 17, 20–22, 24; RGB Nr. 135 (November 15, 1867), Paragraphs 6, 13–17; RGB Nr. 137 (June 28, 1890).

5 Gesetz vom 28. Juni 1890, RGB Nr.237, über die Bestrafung der Nichtbefolgung eines Militäreinberufungsbefehles und der Verleitung hiezu. For the larger context, see Lelewer, Georg, Die strafbaren Verletzungen der Wehrpflicht in rechtsvergleichender und rechtspolitischer Darstellung (Vienna and Leipzig: Carl Fromme, 1907), 8489, 179–85Google Scholar; Roller, Alexander, Ausnahmsgesetze und Vewrdnungen fur den Kriegsfall in der osterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (Vienna: Manz, 1914), 139, 172–73, 194Google Scholar; and Schmid, Ferdinand, Das Heeresrecht der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie (Vienna: F. Tempsky; Leipzig: G. Freytag, 1903), 125, 3964; 547–56, 569–70Google Scholar.

6 Pressgesetz vom 17. Dezember 1862, Nr. 6, RGB für 1863; Pressgesetz vom 9. uni 1894, RGB Nr. 161; and Pressgesetz vom 27. Dezember 1899, RGB Nr. 261. See also Laurence, Richard R., “The Viennese Press and the Peace Movement, 1899–1914,” Michigan Academician 13 (Fall 1980): 155–63Google Scholar.

7 See Suttner's, review of Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is within You in the periodical Die Waffen nieder! 3 (1894): 310Google Scholar.

8 See Howard, Michael, War and the Liberal Conscience (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1978), 3151Google Scholar; Cooper, Sandi E., “Liberal Internationalists before World War I,” Peace and Change 1 (Spring 1973): 1119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Hamann, Brigitte, Bertha von Suttner. Ein Leben fur den Frieden (Munich and Zurich: Piper, 1986)Google Scholar.

10 Hamann, Brigitte, Elisabeth, Kaiserin wider Willen (Vienna: Amalthea, 1982)Google Scholar [published in English as The Reluctant Empress, trans. Hein, Ruth (New York: Knopf, 1986)]Google Scholar; idem, Rudolf. Kronprinz und Rebell (Vienna: Amalthea, 1978); idem, Die Habsburger. Ein biographisches Lexikon (Munich: Piper, 1988).

11 Kempf, Beatrix, Bertha von Suttner. Das Leben einer grossen Frau (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1964)Google Scholar recently reprinted under the new title Bertha von Suttner. Schriftstellerin, Politikerin, Pazipstin (Munich: Wilhelm Heyne, 1987). The original work appears in English translation as Suffragette for Peace: The Life of Bertha von Suttner, translated from the German by Last, R. W. (London: Oswald Wolff, 1972)Google Scholar. The same translation is published in the United States under the title Woman for Peace: The Life of Bertha von Suttner (Park Ridge, N.J.: Noyes, 1973).

12 See Breycha-Vautier, Arthur Carl de, “Dokumente um ein Leben. Die ‘Bertha-von-SuttnerSammlung’ der Bibliothek der Vereinigten Nationen,” Festschrift des Haus-, Hof-und Staatsarchivs (Vienna, 1949), 1:912Google Scholar; and Abrams, Irwin, “Bertha von Suttner (1843–1914): Bibliographical Notes,” Peace and Change 16 (1991): 6769Google Scholar.

13 Suttner, Bertha von, Inventarium einer Seek (Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich, n.d. [1883]), 108–16Google Scholar; idem, Memoiren (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1909), 155.

14 Suttner, Inventarium, 114.

15 Kempf, Bertha von Suttner, 28; Braker, Regina, “Bertha von Suttner as Author: The Harriet Beecher Stowe of the Peace Movement,” Peace and Change 16 (1991): 7496CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Suttner, , Die Waffen nieder! Eine Lebensgeschichte (Dresden and Leipzig: E. Pierson, 1892), 2:304–5Google Scholar.

17 Chickering, Roger, Imperial Germany and a World without War: The Peace Movement and German Society, 1892–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 3888Google Scholar.

18 Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 166.

19 Cf. Suttner, Die Waffen nieder! tine Lebensgeschichte [novel], 2:304–5; Die Waffen nieder! [periodical] 1 (August 15, 1892): 51–52; Die Friedenswarte 8 (1906): 1; and Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 167.

20 Laurence, “The Viennese Press and the Peace Movement,” 155–63.

21 Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 187–89; Laurence, Richard R., “Viennese Literary Intellectuals and the Problem of War and Peace,” in Focus on Vienna 1900: Change and Continuity in Literature, Music, Art and Intellectual History, ed. Nielsen, Erika (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1982), 1222Google Scholar; idem, “Rudolf Grossmann and Anarchist Antimilitarism in Austria before World War I,” Peace and Change 14 (April 1989): 155–75; Havránek, Jan, “Der tschechische Pazifismus und Antimilitarismus am Vorabend des Weltkrieges,” in Friedensbewegungen. Bedingungen und Wirkungen, ed. Heiss, Gernot and Lutz, Heinrich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1984), 114–35Google Scholar.

22 Suttner, , Memoiren (1909 edition)Google Scholar, 271; Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 333.

23 Abrams, Irwin, The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates: An Illustrated Biographical History, 1901–1987 (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988), 5356Google Scholar; Kempf, Bertha von Suttner, 58–69; Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 330–68.

24 Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 221.

25 Quoted in ibid., 220.

26 Quoted in Tate, Merze, The Disarmament Illusion: The Movement for a Limitation of Armaments to 1907 (New York: Macmillan, 1942), 167–69Google Scholar.

27 Laurence, “The Viennese Press and the Peace Movement,” 155–63.

28 Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 248–53. When the Suttners raised this issue with Count Muraviev, the Russian foreign minister, his reply was that the tsar and the Russian government were the peace movement in Russia; therefore the country had no need for peace societies, as in the West.

29 “Protokoll über die am 25. Mai 1907 im Ministerium des k.u.k. Hauses und des Äussern stattgehabte Besprechung zur Feststellung der Instruktionen für die österreichisch-ungarischen Delegierten bei der den 15. Juni nach dem Haag einberufenen II. internationalen Friedenskonferenz,” Vienna, Haus-, Hof-und Staatsarchiv, A.R. 60/67.

30 Quoted in Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 408.

31 Kempf, Bertha von Suttner, 85.

32 Suttner, , Memoiren (1909 edition), 183Google Scholar; Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 141. On the travails and the accomplishments of women in the peace movement, see Cooper, Sandi, “The Work of Women in Nineteenth Century Continental European Peace Movements,” Peace and Change 9 (Winter 1984): 1128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pierson, Ruth Roach, ed., Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical, and Practical Perspectives (London: Croom Helm, 1987)Google Scholar.

33 Quoted in Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 464.

34 Die Waffen nieder! [periodical] 3(1894): 310Google Scholar.

35 Suttner, , Memoiren (1909 edition), 354–55Google Scholar; Die Friedenswarte 7(1905): 19.

36 Quoted in Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 140.

37 Laurence, “Viennese Literary Intellectuals,” 12–22; Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 140–43.

38 Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 83.

39 See Schorske, Carl E., Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Knopf, 1980)Google Scholar; and Wohl, Robert, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

40 Italics in the original; quoted in Hamann, Bertha von Suttner, 140.

41 Cf. Saturday Review (04 7, 1965), 27Google Scholar.

42 Chickering, Imperial Germany and a World without War, 94.

43 Abrams, Irwin, “Bertha Sophia Felicita Kinsky, Baroness von Suttner,” in Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders, ed. Josephson, Harold (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1985), 923Google Scholar.

44 Laurence, “The Peace Movement in Austria,” 21–41.

45 Kuehl, Warren F., ed., Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood, 1983)Google Scholar; Josephson, ed., Biographical Dictionary of Modem Peace Leaders; Donat, Helmut and Holl, Karl, eds., Die Friedensbewegung. Organisierter Pazifismus in Deutschland, Österreich und in der Schweiz (Düsseldorf: Econ, 1983)Google Scholar.

46 See complete reference in note 1, above.

47 See the works listed in note 1 and Solomon Wank, “The Austrian Peace Movement and the Habsburg Ruling Elite,” 54–58; idem, “Pessimism in the Austrian Establishment at the Turn of the Century,” in The Mirror of History: Essays in Honor of Fritz Fellner, ed. S. Wank et al. (Santa Barbara, Calif., and Oxford: ABC-Clio, 1988), 306–8; idem, “Varieties of Political Despair: Three Exchanges between Aehrenthal and Goluchowski, 1898–1906,” in Intellectual and Social Developments in the Habsburg Empire from Maria Theresa to World War 1, ed. Stanley B. Winters and Joseph Held (Boulder, Colo.: East European Quarterly; New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1975), 227–28; idem, “The Growth of Nationalism in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848–1918,” East Central Europe/L'Europe du Centre-Est 10, pts. 1–2 (1983): 173–79; and idem, “Political versus Military Thinking in Austria-Hungary, 1908–1912,” Peace and Change 7 (Winter 1981): 1–15.

48 Wank, “Diplomacy against the Peace Movement,” 75–76.

49 Dülffer, Jost and Holl, Karl, eds., Bereit zum Krieg. Kriegsmentalitat im wilhelminischen Deutschland 1890–1914. Beitrage zur historischen Friedensforschung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986)Google Scholar; R. Chickering, “War, Peace, and Social Mobilization in Imperial Germany: Patriotic Societies, the Peace Movement, and Socialist Labor,” and Dülffer, Jost, “Citizens and Diplomats: The Debate on the First Hague Conference (1899)Google Scholar in Germany,“ in Chatfield and van den Dungen, eds., Peace Movements and Political Cultures, 3–22, 23–39.

50 On the history of the peace movement in Germany, see R. Chickering, Imperial Germany and a World without War, idem, “Problems of a German Peace Movement, 1890–1914,” in Wank, ed., Doves and Diplomats, 42–54; idem, “War, Peace, and Social Mobilization in Imperial Germany: Patriotic Societies, the Peace Movement, and Socialist Labor,” in Chatfield and van den Dungen, eds., Peace Movements and Political Cultures, 3–22; Riesenberger, Dieter, Ceschichte der Friedensbewegung in Deutschland. Von den Anfängen bis 1933 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985)Google Scholar; Scheer, Friedrich-Karl, Die deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (1892–1933). Organisation, Ideologie, politische Ziele. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Pazifismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt, Berne, and New York: Lang, 1980)Google Scholar; Holl, Karl, Pazifismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988)Google Scholar. For a pro-found and searching analysis of the forces that opposed the peace movement in Germany, see Chickering, Roger, We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, 1886–1914 (Boston, London, and Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1984)Google Scholar.

51 The following studies, nevertheless, are excellent and valuable: on Fischhof, , Charmatz, Richard, Adolf Fischhof. Das Lebensbild eines österreichischen Politikers (Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1910)Google Scholar; on Fried, Chickering, Imperial Germany and a World without War; on Lammasch, , Verosta, Stephan, Theorie und Realität von Biindnissen. Heinrich Lammasch, Karl Renner und der Zweibund (1897–1914) (Vienna: Europa, 1971)Google Scholar.

52 Ritter, Harry, “Austro-German Liberalism and the Modern Liberal Tradition,” German Studies Review 7 (05 1984): 227–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Ritter, Harry, “Progressive Historians and the Historical Imagination in Austria: Heinrich Friedjung and Richard Charmatz,” Austrian History Yearbook 1920, pt. 1 (1983–84): 4590Google Scholar.

53 Ritter, “Austro-German Liberalism,” 232–33.