War to war

There isn't much graffiti in my neighborhood in Cologne. Building owners quickly paint it over. One of those that has been adorning the facade of a building at the end of the street I walk along every day to the supermarket for weeks now reads "Krieg dem Krieg" - War to War. A little further down the street, where refugees from one of those wars have settled, I read messages from desperate people: No border, no nation!

In a world where borders become ramparts and wars are everyday, digitized mass death, both graffiti express a sincere, powerless pacifism.

My early role models held guitars in their hands, despising war. Their songs warned, pleaded, accused. Their names were Dylan, Marley, Morrison. At eighteen, I trusted them more than Corporal Kljun, who shouted: Atom from the right! And all of us – boys in uniforms – would have thrown ourselves on the muddy ground. Corporal Kljun, originally from somewhere in Istria, was for me a symbol of everything I hated about the army: ignorant, stupid, vain and vindictive. Before our eyes, he activated the fuse for a bomb that blew his fist open. For me, he was the army. Ignorant, stupid, vain and vindictive. When I walked out of the gates of the Boronga barracks as a civilian at the end of the summer of 1982, I was a staunch pacifist. The experience of that gray olive year confirmed for me what I already knew from reading Remarque's novels as a high school student - war, which for me included peacetime training for him, is an autoimmune disease of humanity. And armies are its disgusting metastases.

As a student, I knew what Einstein, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Bell thought about war. I liked Muhammad Ali's consistency. He would rather go to prison as a champion than to Vietnam. John Lennon was the man whose anthem of peace I used to bore people at parties with. It was only later that I realized that the pacifist idea was much older than my idealism. I once read what a brave woman said long before I was born: "No sensible person would think of washing ink stains with ink, or oil stains with oil. Only blood tries to wash itself off with blood again and again."

Her name was Bertha von Suttner. She was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. That sentence piqued my curiosity. And the more I learned about Bertha von Suttner's life and struggle, the more I admired her.

ANGEL OF PEACE IN CHRISTIANITY

Berta was actually awarded the Nobel Prize in 1905. But she – due to lack of money and health problems – was unable to travel from Italy, where she was staying, to Christiania, as Oslo was then called, to receive the award. This was done later, on April 18, 1906 – exactly 120 years ago. In Norway, which had gained full independence in 1905, she was welcomed as a pop star. The Norwegian public saw in her a true leader of a new era.

Bertha was received by King Haakon VII of Norway. At the ceremony on April 18, she was introduced by the famous Norwegian writer and Nobel laureate Bjernstjerne Bjernson, who also wrote the lyrics to the Norwegian national anthem. In his speech, he highlighted her incredible courage as a young woman in Austria-Hungary, one of the most militarized countries in Europe, to dare to shout “Down with the Arms.” The Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs hosted a ceremonial banquet at which he gave a toast in German, calling Bertha the “commander-in-chief” of the peace movement, which was met with thunderous applause.

The postponement of her arrival in Norway due to financial and health reasons only increased public curiosity. Who is this determined woman who manages to win powerful allies for her utopia – a world without war – in a world tailored to the will of men? She was welcomed as an “angel of peace”, and the Norwegian press extensively reported on her every move.

For the first time, a woman stood alone at that podium, and Berta's appearance in the black she wore for her late husband Arturo left a deep impression on everyone present.

PROPHETIC SPEECH

Bertha von Suttner knew what to say. She advocated the translation of eternal truths and rights into binding rules between states and peoples: "One of these truths is that peace is the foundation and ultimate goal of happiness, and one of these rights is the right to one's own life. The strongest of all instincts, the instinct of self-preservation, represents, so to speak, the legitimization of this right, and the recognition of this right is sanctified by the ancient commandment: 'Thou shalt not kill.'"

Some words spoken by Bertha von Suttner then sound frighteningly relevant today: "Of all the struggles and questions that fill our turbulent times, the question of whether a state of force or a state of law will prevail among states is probably the most important and has the most far-reaching consequences. For just as the consequences of a secured world peace are unimaginably happy and beneficial, so are the consequences of a world war that still threatens and that some blinded people even desire."

It will turn out, when Berte is no longer among the living, that there are far more blinded people than those who have regained their sight. Two world wars and unimaginable suffering will follow.

In her speech, Bertha also mentioned her long-standing friendship with Alfred Nobel, as well as her personal acquaintances with world leaders. Some of them were receptive to her proposals. Bertha was received at the White House in October 1904 by United States President Theodore Roosevelt. He was sympathetic to her ideas. Bertha quoted one of his messages to Congress in her speech in Norway, that it was the duty of his government – ​​and Bertha added that it was the duty of all governments – to bring about by all possible means the time “when the sword shall no longer be the judge among the nations.”

THE WAY OF LIFE

She was born on June 9, 1843, in Prague, then part of the Habsburg Empire, into the noble Kinski family. Her father, General Franz Michael Kinski, died before her birth, and the family soon fell into financial difficulties, although Bertha received a good education, excelling in languages, music, and literature.

Due to financial problems, in 1873 she accepted a job as a governess for the Viennese Sutner family. There she fell in love with Arthur Gundakar von Sutner, the son of the family. At first, they kept their relationship a secret.

In 1876, Bertha read an unusual advertisement in the newspaper: "A very wealthy, educated, elderly gentleman, living in Paris, seeks a lady of mature years, skilled in languages, as a secretary and housekeeper." The signatory was Alfred Nobel, the king of dynamite, who was then living in Paris. A poor noblewoman in a secret relationship with the younger Arthur von Suttner, whose family opposed the marriage, saw a chance to get out of a hopeless situation and applied for the job.

She got the job and traveled to Paris. Nobel was captivated by her intelligence and charisma. Although the job lasted only two weeks, they developed a deep respect for each other. Nobel, who was withdrawn and often depressed, found in Bertha a person who could match his intellectual abilities.

Bertha did not even unpack her suitcases, and she received a telegram in which Arthur wrote to her that he could not live without her. Without much thought, she returned from Paris to secretly marry him. Nobel was not angry – he was touched by her courage to choose love over comfort. They remained in correspondence for the next 20 years. Nobel sent her letters signing himself “Your Alfred”. Bertha constantly asked him in her letters to donate money to peace movements, to which he would sometimes respond ironically, but he would always send a check.

When Nobel died, Bertha was one of the few people he left special recognition to in his will. Although she no longer worked for him, he saw her as his "conscience."

After their marriage in 1876, Bertha and her husband lived for several years in the Caucasus, in what was then Georgia, where she began to write more seriously. Her husband, also a writer, was a great supporter. After returning to Austria in the 19s, she gradually became involved in the international peace movement.

A crucial moment in her career occurred in 1889, when she published the novel "Down with the Arms!" (German: Lay down your weapons!). In this work, she described the horrors of war and militarism through the fate of one woman. The novel went through 37 editions. It was translated into numerous languages ​​and strongly contributed to the popularization of pacifist ideas in Europe.

Sutner then became one of the leading figures in the organized peace movement. In 1891, she founded the Austrian Society of Friends of Peace and participated in numerous international congresses. She was also one of the few women to participate in the First Hague Peace Conference in 1899, where she advocated international arbitration and arms control.

"WEAPONS DOWN"

In the novel, Bertha von Suttner places the personal story of the heroine Martha Althaus in the real historical context of the European wars of the 19th century. Martha Althaus grows up in an aristocratic Austrian family in which the militaristic spirit prevails. War and military glory are considered a natural and honorable part of life. In a confessional tone, her transformation is described based on personal experience in the wars that shaped the political history of Europe.

The first of these, the Second Italian War of Independence, actually a war between Austria and France and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, directly affects the heroine's life. Her first husband, an officer in the Austrian army, is killed in it. The battles of that conflict have become a symbol of enormous losses and chaos on the battlefield in European history. Solferino is especially famous for inspiring the founding of the Red Cross.

Seven years after this conflict, in 1866, the Austro-Prussian War broke out. Martha Althaus began to doubt the militaristic values ​​with which she had grown up. She remarried. Her second husband, Friedrich Thieling, had liberal and pacifist ideas. In their conversations, Martha heard serious criticism of militarism for the first time and began to question her previous beliefs.

The Franco-Prussian War, with the collapse of France in 1871, the creation of the German Empire, and the Paris Commune as a dramatic continuation of the violence after the Franco-Prussian War, occupy a central place in the novel. Martha and Tiling are horrified by the cruelty of the war. Tiling writes to his wife from the battlefield:

"Why am I writing you all this? Why don't I begin, as befits a warrior, to sing in rapture the praises of the warrior's craft? Why? Because I long for the truth - and for its unreserved expression; because I have always hated false phrases - and at this moment, when I am so near death and when I speak to you, who perhaps yourself are lying dying - it does me doubly to speak as is in my heart. Let thousands of others think differently, or at least consider it their duty to speak differently, I want, I must say it once more before I myself become a victim of war: I hate war. If only everyone who feels the same had the courage to declare it aloud - what a thunderous protest would then resound to the heavens! Everyone shout ura which now echo along with the roar of the cannons would be overpowered by the cry of humanity longing for humanity, the triumphant cry: War to war!"

Elsewhere, Friedrich Thieling says: "When it comes to defending one's own life from another murderer, then personal responsibility for murder ceases. War has often and quite justifiably been called mass murder, but the individual does not feel like a murderer."

PACIFISM AS A SCANDAL

In its time, this novel was a double scandal. It was written by a woman. And it was a frontal attack on militarism: “On the battlefield there are no winners – there are only the dead and those who mourn the dead.”

The novel emphasizes that the real losers of war are ordinary people: soldiers, families, and civilians. Even the victorious side pays a huge price in human lives and suffering. “War, celebrated in songs as heroic, is in reality only an endless procession of pain, blood, and tears,” it says at one point. The female perspective is clearly developed for the first time: “For women, war is never glory – it is only loss.”

It should come as no surprise that Europe's conservative military elite greeted this book with contempt and hatred. The novel beautifully states: "Peoples do not want war - those who rule want war." If Bertha's ideas were to come true, the generals would have to look for new jobs: "The time will come when disputes between nations will be resolved by courts, not by cannons."

Bertha gained the respect of her famous contemporaries. Through her correspondence with Alfred Nobel, she transformed him from a skeptic into a man who invested his fortune in peace.

Leo Tolstoy was for absolute Christian non-violence, and she for legal pacifism. Despite this difference, Tolstoy highly valued her novel “Lay Down Your Arms!”. “Reading your novel has brought me great joy. It is so true, so noble, and so convincing,” he wrote to her, adding that her book would do for peace what “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” did for the abolition of slavery. Romain Rolland, the French Nobel laureate and pacifist, considered Bertha his predecessor.

The famous Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was a great admirer of hers. In his memoirs, “Yesterday’s World,” he sadly recalled Bertha as a visionary who was not listened to. He called her “the Cassandra of our time” because she had warned in vain of the coming catastrophe of World War I. In June 1914, just a few days before her death, they met on the street in Vienna. Bertha von Suttner almost screamed in despair at the shadow of a great war looming over Europe and the world: “People don’t know what’s coming! It will be terrible, it will destroy our civilization!”

She didn't experience it. But she was right. Civilization committed suicide twice in the last century. Around the world, local versions of it, including ours, have even had a series of war suicides since then.

And us? In the spring of 2026, we stare at our screens in disbelief, tired of the destruction between Kiev and Tehran.

We miss Bert.