Bertha von Suttner born - June 9, 1843

On this day, writer, pacifist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Bertha von Suttner was born. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Day in History Class. It's a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi again, Welcome to this day in History Class,
where history waits for no One. Today is June nine, nineteen.

(00:22):
The day was June ninety three. Baroness Bretta Felicia Zophie
von Sutna was born Countess Kinsky von Schanzu Tao in Prague, Bohemia.
Sutner wrote many novels and was a leader in the
Austrian peace movement, and her work earned her a Nobel
Peace Prize, the first ever awarded to a woman. Berta's father,

(00:47):
Count Franz Joseph Kinsky, died just before she was born.
He was a retired high ranking officer in the army.
Her mother was named Sophie Velamina von Corner. She was
about fifty years younger than her deceased husband, and she
did not get married again after her husband died and

(01:07):
used the family's inheritance to raise Berta and her brother.
Berta was a member of the aristocracy, but she was
also shunned by the high aristocracy because of her parents
mixed social status. Is In her younger years, she studied
music and she read a bunch of books through her
governesses tutors and travels throughout Europe. Berta became fluent in

(01:32):
French and English in addition to German. In eighteen seventy three,
she became a governess for the Baron von Sutner family
in Lower Austria. While there, she fell in love with
the youngest son of the family, Baron Artur Gundakar von Sutner.
In eighteen seventy six, Bertel went to Paris to apply

(01:52):
for a job as Alfred Nobel's secretary. Alfred Nobele was
a Swedish chemist and engineer who invented dynam night and
founded the Nobel Prizes. But she soon returned to Austria
and eloped with Sutner, acquiring the title of Baroness. Though
she left within weeks of arriving in Paris, Verta kindled

(02:13):
a friendship with Nobel that lasted until his death in
eighteen ninety six. The Suitures were not too happy with
our tour and Arta's marriage, so the couple went off
to the Caucusus to live for nine years. They earned
a living there by teaching language and music as well
as writing. Berta wrote for literary papers using a pseudonym,

(02:36):
and she wrote several books during this time, including Inventory
of a Soul, in which she argued for peace through
technological progress and advocated for disarmament. Never having lost her
love for reading, she studied Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Henry
Thomas Buckle, and Emmanuel Kant. In eighteen eighty five, the

(02:57):
couple went back to Austria, where they kept writing, but
having already been close to the Russell Turkish War of
eighteen seventy seven eighteen seventy eight, she was familiar with
how devastating war could be. Two years after they returned home,
Bear to begin working with the International Arbitration and Peace Association.

(03:17):
After learning about pacifism and employing peace arbitration rather than
armed force, she began including her ideals of peace in
her writing. Her book The Machine Age, originally published in
eighteen eighty nine under the pseudonym Yemond meaning Someone, she
wrote about how technological and economic progress would end war.

(03:39):
Lay Down Your Arms, another book she published in eighteen
eighty nine, was more successful than the first Russian author.
Leo Tolstoy even compared it to Harriet Beetristoe's Uncle Tom's
Cabin and Anti Slavery novel that is known for inspiring
abolitionism and its stereotypes of black people. The book garnered

(03:59):
her concern durable attention in the peace movement. Bart started
an Austrian branch of the international peace movement, called the
Austrian Peace Society in eighteen ninety one. Around this time,
she went to her first international peace congress, the Universal
Peace Conference in Rome, and started a fund to establish

(04:20):
the burn Peace Bureau. She wanted to encourage a unified
Europe and warn't against the ills of nationalism. Bear To
also co edited and published Die Vafanta, a peace journal
with Alfred Hermann Freed. Her husband co founded an organization
that fought against anti Semitism in Austria. Bear To continued

(04:41):
on this same path for the rest of her life.
She wrote articles denouncing war and war mongering. After her
husband died in nineteen o two, she carried on their
work of social activism. In nineteen oh five, Bert became
the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She
had played a part in convincing Alfred Noble of the

(05:03):
peace movement, and he wrote her a letter in eighteen
ninety three, three years before his death, saying he hoped
to establish a peace Prize. She lectured on the progress
necessary to achieve peace, and she attended the first and
second International Peace Conference in eighteen ninety nine. In nineteen
oh seven, she also made a couple of trips to

(05:25):
the United States. Her nineteen twelve trip was a six
month lecture tour. Barita faced ridicule from people who supported
war or anti Semitism, and she was often perceived as
naive for her goals of peace, but she was prominent
among pacifist circles, which mainly consisted of men, and she
became known as the Generalissimo of the peace movement. She

(05:49):
died on June twenty one, nineteen fourteen, of suspected cancer.
Vienna's first hosting of the Universal Peace Congress, to be
held in September, was canceled because of the July Crisis,
a conflict that began with an assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand and Sarajevo. I'm Eve Jeff Coote and hopefully you

(06:09):
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
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You can listen to a new podcast that I host
called Unpopular. Unpopular as a show about people in history
who challenge the status quo and we're sometimes persecuted for it.

(06:33):
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