Bertha von Suttner

Biography

Born within the sound of Prague’s bells on 9 June 1843, Bertha von Suttner grew up in a city that was still stitched into the patchwork of the Habsburg realm. She sharpened words instead of bayonets, turning the novel Die Waffen nieder! into a rallying cry that echoed across Europe and later reached screens in 2014’s Down with Weapons and the 1914 silent version. In 1876 she joined lives—and mischiefs—with fellow pacifist Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner, the two of them weaving matrimony into their shared campaign against the drumbeat of war. She drew her last breath in Vienna on 21 June 1914, only weeks before Europe’s guns proved her warnings heartbreakingly right.