Alfred Hermann Fried

Alfred Hermann Fried, 1911

Alfred Hermann Fried (November 11, 1864 in Vienna, Austria- May 5, 1921 in Vienna), was an Austrian Jewish pacifist, publicist, journalist, co-founder of the German peace movement, and co-winner (with Tobias Asser) of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1911.

Influenced by Bertha von Suttner (Nobel Peace Prize for 1905) Fried became interested in the peace movement, founded the Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft, and edited its major publication, Monatliche Friedenskorrespondenz (Monthly Peace Correspondence), from 1894 to 1899. Having persuaded Baroness von Suttner to serve as editor, he started a peace journal, naming it Die Waffen Nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!), the title of the Baroness' famous 1889 antiwar novel.

Life

Fried left school at the age of 15 and started to work in a book store in Vienna. In 1883 he moved to Berlin, where he opened a book shop of his own in 1887. He created and wrote Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms), and in 1892 he and Bertha von Suttner began to print it in magazine format. In articles published within Die Waffen nieder! and its successor, Die Friedenswarte (The Peace Watch), he articulated his pacifist philosophy.

In 1892 he was a co-founder of the German peace movement. He was one of the fathers of the idea of a modern organization to assure world-wide peace (the principal idea was fulfilled in the League of Nations and after the Second World War in the UN).

Fried was a prominent member of the Esperanto-movement. In 1903 he published the book Lehrbuch der internationalen Hilfssprache Esperanto (Textbook of the International Language of Esperanto). In 1911 he received the Nobel Peace Prize together with Tobias Asser. During the First World War he lived in Switzerland and died in Vienna in 1921.

Career

Fried's efforts were partly responsible for the founding of the Verband für internationale Verstandigung [Society for International Understanding] in 1911. His theory of internationalism did not preclude nationalism. In the Pan-American movement he perceived a model for the preservation of national identity within international organization5. In keeping with this position, Fried defended Germany before World War I by chronicling Wilhelm II's positive attitude toward world peace and during the war by refuting what he considered to be unreasonable criticism of Germany in the French, British, and American press.

Fried was in Vienna when war broke out in 1914. Since pacifist activities there were curtailed by government censorship and intolerant public opinion, Fried shifted his organizational and journalistic work to Switzerland. He was active in efforts to ameliorate the conditions of prisoners of war and continued to publish Die Friedenswarte as a rallying point for international peace efforts. Accused of treason by the Austrian government, he was unable to return to Vienna until the war's end.

The war over, Fried published Mein Kriegstagebuch [My War Journal], a «diary» which he kept during the war years to record his sentiments and his activities, along with those of his colleagues in the peace movement; he expressed dissatisfaction with the peace settlement and organized a journalistic campaign against the Versailles Treaty; he tirelessly pressed the point in his propaganda for peace that the war was proof of the validity of the pacifistic analysis of world politics.[2]

Fried lost what wealth he possessed in the collapse of Austria-Hungary and died in poverty of a lung infection in Vienna at the age of fifty-seven.

Legacy

The Peace Watch“ is the magazine with the longest history in German-speaking regions in matters of peacekeeping and international organization. Since its foundation in 1899 by the future awardee of the Nobel Price of Peace Alfred H. Fried, “Peace Watch” represents a vital forum for the peace-scientific discussion.

Since 1996 “The Peace Watch” has been published by the Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag (Berlin University Press); the editors are Knut Ipsen (Bochum/until 2006), Volker Rittberger (Tübingen) and Christian Tomuschat (Berlin). [3]

Work

• Das Abrüstungs-Problem: Eine Untersuchung. Berlin, Gutman, 1904.
• Abschied von Wien - eLibrary Austria Project (elib Austria etxt in German)
• The German Emperor and the Peace of the World, with a Preface by Norman Angell. London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1912.
• Die Grundlagen des revolutionären Pacifismus. Tübingen, Mohr, 1908. Translated into French by Jean Lagorgette as Les Bases du pacifisme: Le Pacifisme réformiste et le pacifisme «révolutionnaire». Paris, Pedone, 1909.
• Handbuch der Friedensbewegung. (Handbook of the Peace Movement) Wien, Oesterreichischen Friedensgesellschaft, 1905. 2nd ed., Leipzig, Verlag der «Friedens-Warte», 1911.
• «Intellectual Starvation in Germany and Austria», in Nation, 110 (March 20, 1920) 367-368.
• International Cooperation. Newcastle-on-Tyne, Richardson [1918].
• Das internationale Leben der Gegenwart. Leipzig, Teubner, 1908.
• «The League of Nations: An Ethical Institution», in Living Age, 306 (August 21, 1920) 440-443.
• Mein Kriegstagebuch. (My War Journal) 4 Bde. Zürich, Rascher, 1918-1920.
• Pan-Amerika. Zürich, Orell-Füssli, 1910.
• The Restoration of Europe, transl. by Lewis Stiles Gannett. New York, Macmillan, 1916.
• Der Weltprotest gegen den versailler Frieden. Leipzig, Verlag der Neue Geist, 1920.
• Die zweite Haager Konferenz: Ihre Arbeiten, ihre Ergebnisse, und ihre Bedeutung. Leipzig, Nachfolger [1908].

See also

• List of Austrian writers
• List of Austrians
• List of Austrian Jews

External Links

• About Alfred Hermann Fried. Retrieved June 19, 2008.
• Nobel biography. Retrieved June 19, 2008.
• Fried, Alfred Hermann Cartage.org.lb.
• Register of the Alfred Hermann Fried Papers, 1914-1921
• The Restoration of Europe Books.google.com.
• The German Emperor and the Peace of the World Books.google.com.
• Famous Peacemakers Peacemakers.szm.com.
• The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates Books.google.com.
• The 1899 Hague Peace Conference Books.google.com.

Credits

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