Suttner, Baroness Bertha von
Entry updated 18 November 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1843-1914) Austrian journalist, editor and author, famed for her pacifism, for which she became famous after the publication of her novel, Die Waffen Nieder! ["Lay Down Your Arms"] (1889). She is of sf interest for Der Menschheit Hochgedanken: Roman aus der nächsten Zukunft (1911; trans Nathan Haskell Dole as When Thoughts Will Soar: A Romance of the Immediate Future 1914), a Near Future tale in which the solution to international conflict is the Pax Aeronautica, as espoused and demonstrated by the tale's two protagonists. Their eloquent pleading for world peace, and for just treatment of women (see Feminism), sways an international festival in Lucerne, Switzerland, which is attended by a number of recognizable political figures from the years preceding World War One. Suttner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1905. Her image is on the Austrian two-euro coin. [JC]
Bertha Felicitas Sophie Freifrau von Suttner, Gräfin Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau
born Prague, Austrian Empire [now Czech Republic]: 9 June 1843
died Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]: 21 June 1914
works (selected)
- Der Menschheit Hochgedanken: Roman aus der nächsten Zukunft ["The Exalted Thoughts of Mankind: A Novel of the Immediate Future"] (Berlin: Verlag der Friedens-Warte, 1911) [hb/]
- When Thoughts Will Soar: A Romance of the Immediate Future (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914) [trans by Nathan Haskell Dole of the above: hb/]
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