Carl von Ossietzky (1889–1938)

Carl von Ossietzky was born in Hamburg, Germany. His parents were Rosalie (Pratzka) and Carl Ignatius von Ossietzky, a civil servant. The "von" in his name, which would usually suggest aristocratic ancestry, was of unknown origin. Ossietzky's father died when he was two years old and his mother remarried seven years later to Gustav Walther, a Social Democrat who was influential in shaping his political attitudes. Ossietzky left secondary school at age 17 and soon turned to journalism. In 1914, he married Maud Lichfield-Woods, born in India to a British colonial family, with whom he had a daughter, Rosalinde. During World War I, Ossietzky was drafted against his will into the Army and his experiences during the war confirmed him in his pacifism. He returned to Hamburg, where he stirred public opinion with speeches on his doctrine of "peace mentality." In 1919, he became president of the German Peace Society, based in Berlin, where he created the monthly publication Mitteilungsblatt (Information Sheet) in 1920, and became a regular contributor to other periodicals. After he tired of the office work of the Peace Society, Ossietzky accepted the position of foreign editor of the Berliner Volkszeitung (Berlin People's Paper), a nonpartisan, democratic, and anti-war paper. During the Weimar Republic, his political commentaries gained him a reputation as a fervent supporter of democracy and a pluralistic society. As editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Die Weltbühne (The World Stage) beginning in 1926, Ossietzky published a series of exposés of Germany's secret military rearmament in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. He was charged with betrayal of military secrets, found guilty in November 1931, and sentenced to 18 months in prison but released in the Christmas amnesty of 1932. Ossietzky continued to warn against German militarism and the Nazis even after that regime came to power in 1933. He was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to concentration camps at Sonnenburg and Esterwegen, where he endured years of mistreatment and torture. In 1936, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1935; the Nazis demanded that decline it, but he refused. He was ill with tuberculosis and allowed to enter a civilian hospital in Berlin in police custody, where he died at age 48 in 1938. The Stolen Republic: Selected Writings of Carl von Ossietzky, was translated from the German and published in English in 1971.