ABSTRACT
Born in 1843, von Suttner married young and against the will of her family. Her husband was Arthur von Suttner, a writer of reputation and a member of the nobility himself. Husband and wife left Austria to escape the altercations with her parents and lived in Tiñis, now in the Soviet Union, where Arthur worked as an engineer and a war correspondent and Berta became a teacher. Later they moved back to Austria, where both became literarily and politically active. Both were independent, liberal thinkers, who could not agree with the contemporary sociopolitical climate. Arthur von Suttner joined his wife in her antiwar activities, while he himself was engaged in a league in Vienna, fighting anti-Semitism. In 1883, Berta's first novel had appeared, called Inventarium einer Seek (Inventory of a Soul). When her greatest success was published in 1889, she thus was already an established and accredited author. Die Waffen nieder (Lay Down Your Arms), became the basis for her world fame. The positive and negative letters of response, collected and preserved by Berta herself, have all been published in her Memoiren (1905; Memoirs). Alfred Nobel congratulated her and asked her to work for him again, as she had been his personal secretary before she married Arthur, an offer that she declined. Leo Tolstoy compared the novel to Harriet Beecher Stowe's work, so that Die Waffen nieder received the unofficial subtitle "The 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' of the Peace Movement." Felix Dahn wrote a satire on the novel and attacked von Suttner for her antiwar propaganda. The Social Democrats on the other hand, again tried to use her and her reputation for their own work. In 1891 she founded the Austrian Peace Society and supported Alfred Nobel in his efforts to establish a society in Germany in 1892. Between 1892 and 1899 von Suttner was the chief editor and publisher of the pacifist newspaper Die Waffen nieder, founded an International League, and received in 1905, the first woman ever to do so, the Nobel Prize for Peace through the initiative of Alfred Nobel himself.
