Bridget Carter
“War is not in itself a condition so much as the symptom of a condition, that of international anarchy,”
- Alfred Hermann Fried
Alfred Hermann Fried was a born in Vienna in 1864 but pursued most of his active journalistic career in Germany where he opened his own press in 1887. Fried’s philosophy was that of pacifism in which he opposed war and violence. He based many of his publications on this idea and was greatly influenced by Bertha von Suttner who sparked Fried’s interest in the peace movement. Together they worked on the peace journal Die Waffen Nieder! (Lay Down your Arms), based on the title of Suttner’s famous antiwar novel. In 1899 this was replaced by Die Friedenswarte (The Peace Watch). The Hague Peace Conference of 1899 was a turning point in the development of Fried’s philosophy of pacifism. Thereafter, in his appeals to the German intellectual community he placed more reliance on economic cooperation and political organization among nations as bases for peace, and less upon limitation of armaments and schemes for international justice. “War is not in itself a condition so much as the symptom of a condition, that of international anarchy,” he said. “If we wish to substitute for war the settlement of disputes by justice, we must first substitute for the condition of international anarchy a condition of international order.” Fried was in Vienna when war broke out in 1914. Since pacifist activities there were curtailed by government censorship and intolerant public opinion, he 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. In 1911 Fried received the Nobel Peace Prize.