‘The Austrian Society of Friends of Peace’– a brief episode?

According to the historian Laurie Cohen, von Suttner’s appeal in the Neue Freie Presse received 2,000 positive answers within a month and 2,000 krone in donations, enabling an Austrian delegation to take part in the third World Peace Conference in Rome. The appeal also led to the founding of the Austrian Society of Friends of Peace (ÖFG), which, according to its statutes, was a “purely humanitarian” society. Bertha von Suttner was appointed president and retained this position until her death on 21 June 1914.

The first members of the society were friends and acquaintances of Bertha and Arthur von Suttner, including the author Peter Rosegger, the journalist Leopold Katscher, Prince Alfred Graf von Wrede and Wilhelm Exner, as well as many politicians, literati and academics.

The main aim of the ÖFG was to raise public awareness of the need for lasting peace and the peaceful settlement of conflicts through an international court of arbitration. These aims were to be achieved above all through publications, public lectures and participation in international conferences. The main outlet of the ÖFG was the magazine Die Waffen nieder! Monatsschrift zur Förderung der Friedensidee, edited by Bertha von Suttner and published by Alfred H. Fried.

The Austrian Peace Society started out with 2,000 members, but it only grew slowly in the following years. By 1894, however, it was large enough for the first local groups to be founded in Trieste and Baden and, a year later, a Hungarian peace society in Budapest, Magyar Szent Korona Országainak Békeegyesülete (“Peace Society of the Lands of St. Stephan’s Crown”).

In spite of these developments, Bertha von Suttner soon realised that the ÖFG was not progressing as she had hoped. Membership remained far below her expectations, and interest and active support of the peace movement appeared to be more of a ‘flash in the pan’ than an eternal flame. In the years before the outbreak of the First World War the Austrian Peace Society was therefore merely a formal presence. Suttner’s disappointment at the failure to become involved in the international peace organisation prompted her in 1913 to consider resigning as president. She was also disappointed that, unlike the women’s or workers’ movements, the peace movement did not have popular appeal.

Bertha von Suttner died on 21 June 1914 during preparations for the planned 21st World Peace Conference. It was to have taken place in Vienna in September that year but did not do so because of the outbreak of war. An obituary appearing in Friedens-Warte stated: “Ever since we mortals have had a peace movement, ever since the fight for it flared up again at the turn of the century, this great movement was associated with her personality. They were so interlinked, the movement and the woman, that they were almost synonymous. Bertha von Suttner was the living symbol of the movement.”

Translation: Nick Somers