Mujeres Nobel

 

BERTHA VON SUTTNER

Nobel Peace Prize, 1905

She was the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She was born in Prague on June, 9, 1843 and grew in an aristocratic environment, of strong military attachment. In her youth, the reading of A memory of Solferino by Henri Dunant, witness of that battle, founder of the Red Cross and the first Nobel Peace Prize encouraged her future pacifist commitment.

In 1873 she went to Vienna to work as a governess to the daughters of Baron von Suttner, but her romance with the son of the family caused to be dismissed. It was then that Alfred Nobel hired her as a secretary at his house in Paris. Despite the short time she worked for him, their friendship lasted a lifetime. In 1876 she returned to Vienna to marry Arthur von Suttner.

In 1883 she published her first novel, Inventory of a Soul, and in1887, she contacted with the International Arbitration and Peace Association, which defended dialogue and mediation instead of weapons. Two years later, she published what would become her masterpiece, ¡Down with Arms! in order to raise awareness about the importance of defending peace in the world. The book had an immediate success and soon became an icon of the pacifist movement, being translated into numerous languages. In 1891 she founded the Austrian Association for Peace, and along her life she attended international forums reporting on them to Alfred Nobel, who, in 1903, wrote her a letter considered to be the origin of the Nobel Peace Prizes. She was proposed for the prize from the first edition and finally, in 1905, she received it for her great contribution to the defense of peace and the European Union.

She died in Vienna on June 21, 1914, at the age of 71, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War.