Bertha von Suttner

The Nobel Peace Prize 1905

Generalissimo, Peace Movement. Author, 'Lay Down Your Arms'. Permanent International Peace Bureau. Vigorously opposed militaristic traditions. Eternal truth: happiness created, developed in peace. Eternal right: individual's right to live.

"Inform me, convince me, and then I will do something great for the movement", Alfred Nobel said to Bertha von Suttner."

Family

When Bertha von Suttner's mother was pregnant with her, her father passed away.

At thirty, feeling she could no longer impose on her mother's dwindling funds, she took a position in Vienna as teacher-companion to the four daughters of the Suttner household. Here she met her future husband, the youngest son of the family. In 1876 she left for Paris to become Alfred Nobel's secretary but returned, after only a brief stay, to marry Baron Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner. Because of the Suttners' strong disapproval of the marriage, the young couple left immediately for the Caucasus where for nine years they earned an often precarious living by giving lessons in languages and music and eventually, and more successfully, by writing.

Although grief-stricken after her husband's death in 1902, she determined to carry on the work which they had so often done together and which he had asked her to continue.

Uploaded on 12/10/2015