Carl von Ossietzky (; 3 October 1889 – 4 May 1938) was a German journalist and pacifist. He was the recipient of the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in exposing the clandestine German rearmament.Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power 1933–1939, Penguin Books, p. 153; .
As editor-in-chief of the magazine , Ossietzky published a series of exposés in the late 1920s detailing Germany's violation of the Treaty of Versailles by rebuilding an air force (the predecessor of the Luftwaffe) and training pilots in the Soviet Union. He was convicted of treason and espionage in 1931 and sentenced to eighteen months in prison, but was granted amnesty in December 1932.
Ossietzky continued to be a vocal critic of German militarism after the Nazis' rise to power. Following the 1933 Reichstag fire, Ossietzky was again arrested and sent to the Esterwegen concentration camp near Oldenburg. His brutal torture after his arrest was documented by the International Red Cross. He was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize in 1936, but was forbidden from travelling to Norway to accept it. After enduring five years of mistreatment in Nazi concentration camps, Ossietzky died of tuberculosis in a Berlin hospital in 1938.
Early life Ossietzky was born in Hamburg, the son of Carl Ignatius von Ossietzky (1848–1891), a Protestant from Upper Silesia, and Rosalie (née Pratzka), a devout Catholic who wanted her son to enter Holy Orders and become a priest or monk. His father worked as a stenographer in the office of a lawyer, and of senator Max Predöhl, but died when Ossietzky was two years old. Ossietzky was baptized as a Roman Catholic in Hamburg on 10 November 1889 and confirmed in the Lutheran Hauptkirche St Michaelis on 23 March 1904.
The von in Ossietzky's name, which would generally suggest noble ancestry, is of unknown origin. Ossietzky himself explained, perhaps half in jest, that it derived from an ancestor's service in a Polish lancer cavalry regiment as the Elector of Brandenburg was unable to pay his two regiments of lancers at one point due to an empty war chest, so he instead conferred nobility upon the entirety of the two regiments.Deák, István. Weimar Germany's Left Wing Intellectuals. 1968, University of California Press, p. 49.
Despite his failure to finish Realschule (a form of German secondary school), Ossietzky succeeded in embarking on a career in journalism, with the topics of his articles ranging from theatre criticism to feminism and the problems of early motorisation. He later said that his opposition to German militarism during the final years of the German Empire under Wilhelm II led him as early as 1913 to become a pacifist.
That year, he married Maud Lichfield-Woods, a Mancunian suffragette, born to a British colonial officer and the great-granddaughter of an Indian princess from Hyderabad. They had one daughter, Rosalinda. During World War I, Ossietzky was drafted much against his will into the Army and his experiences during the warwhere he was appalled by the carnageconfirmed him in his pacifism. During the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), his political commentaries gained him a reputation as a fervent supporter of democracy and a pluralistic society.Wheeler-Bennett, John. The Nemesis of Power, London: Macmillan, 1967, pp. 92–94.
Discovery of illegal German rearmament In 1921, the German military founded the (work squads) built up by Major Bruno Ernst Buchrucker. Officially labour groups intended to assist with civilian projects, in reality the members were soldiers secretly trained by the Reichswehr in order to exceed the limits on troop strength set by the Treaty of Versailles.
The Black Reichswehr took its orders from a group in the German Army led by Fedor von Bock, Kurt von Schleicher, Eugen Ott and Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord. The Black Reichswehr became infamous for using Feme murders to punish "traitors" who, for example, revealed the locations of weapons' stockpiles or names of members. Secret "trials" were conducted of which the victims were unaware, and after finding the accused guilty they would send out a man to execute the "court's" sentence of death. During the trials of some of those charged with the murders, prosecutors alleged that the killings were ordered by the officers from Bock's group. Regarding the Feme murders, Ossietzky wrote:
Lieutenant Schulz (charged with the murder of informers against the Black Reichswehr) did nothing but carry out the orders given him, and that certainly Colonel von Bock, and probably Colonel von Schleicher and General Seeckt, should be sitting in the dock beside him.
Reflecting his pacifism, Ossietzky became secretary of the German Peace Society () in 1919.
"Homeless left"
In the 1920s, Ossietzky became one of the leaders of the "homeless left", centered on the newspaper which rejected Communism, but found the Social Democrats too inclined to compromise with the old order."Coming to Terms with Democracy", pp. 86–87 from
Ossietzky often complained that the men who staffed the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the military under the Kaiser were the same men serving the Weimar Republic, something that was a major concern for him as he frequently warned that these men had no commitment to democracy, and would turn against the republic at the first chance.
In this regard, Ossietzky at helped to publish a statistical study in 1923, showing that German judges were inclined to impose extremely harsh sentences on those who broke laws in the name of the left while imposing very lenient sentences on those who committed much violence in the name of the right. He often drew a contrast between the fate of Social Democrat Felix Fechenbach who was imprisoned after a questionable trial for publishing secret documents showing that the German Empire was responsible for World War I and that of the Navy captain Hermann Ehrhardt of the whose men occupied Berlin during the Kapp Putsch, killed several hundred civilians and was never tried for his actions. At the same time, Ossietzky was often critical of those republicans who claimed to believe in democracy without actually knowing what democracy meant.Ossietzky, Carl von "Defending the Republic: The Great Fashion", pp. 110–102 from .
Ossietzky was especially critical of the (Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold), the paramilitary group set up by the Social Democrats to defend democracy. Ossietzky wrote in 1924:
Whoever has learned from the events of the past five years knows that it is not the nationalists, the monarchists who represent the real danger, but the absence of substantive content and ideas in the concept of the German republic and that no-one will succeed in vitalizing that concept. Defence of the republic is good. It is better to go beyond that to an understanding of what in the republic is worth defending and what should not be retained. This question escapes the ; more precisely, it has probably not yet recognized that such a question even exists.Our republic is not yet an object of mass consciousness but a constitutional document and a governmental administration. When people want to see the republic, they are shown the Wilhelmstrasse. And then one wonders why they return home somewhat shamed. Nothing is there to make the heart beat faster. Around this state, lacking any ideas and with an eternally guilty conscience, there are grouped a couple of so-called constitutional parties, likewise lacking an idea and with no better conscience, which are not led, but administered. Administered by a bureaucratic caste that is responsible for the misery of recent years in domestic and foreign affairs and that smothers all signs of fresh life with a cold hand. If the does not find within itself the idea, the inspiring idea, and the youth does not finally storm the gates, then it will not become the avant-garde of the republic, but the cudgel-guard of the partycrats, and their interests will be defended foremost, not the republic...And the effect? The honours the constitution with festivals; the goose-steps; the drapes Potsdam in black-red-gold; the scraps with the Communists and Fechenbach sits in the penitentiary. That is the joke of it. But if the had as many determined fellows among its members as Captain Ehrhardt, then Fechenbach would no longer be sitting in the penitentiary today. French democrats rescued their Spanish brothers in the cause, whom they did not even know by sight, from the claws of a dictator. The thought of an injustice committed somewhere in the world kept them from sleeping. The German democrats and socialists are more solidly organized. It is not at all true that they are as weak-kneed as is always believed; it is just that they have terribly thick skin. Besides, they are faithful to the law and to the constitution. To rescue someone from prison-that would mean acting against the law! God forbid! And Fechenbach sits in the penitentiary.
In 1927, Ossietzky succeeded Kurt Tucholsky as editor-in-chief of the periodical . In 1932, he supported Ernst Thälmann's candidacy for the German presidency, though still a critic of the actual policy of the German Communist Party and the Soviet Union.
affair
On 12 March 1929 published an article by Walter Kreiser, one of its writers: an exposé of the training of a special air unit of the , referred to as (Section M), which was secretly training in Germany and in Soviet Russia, in violation of Germany's agreements under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. Kreiser and Ossietzky, the paper's editor, were questioned by a magistrate of the Supreme Court about the article later that year and were finally indicted in early 1931 for "treason and espionage", the assertion being that they had drawn international attention to state affairs which the state had purposefully attempted to keep secret. The arrests were widely seen at the time as an effort to silence , which had been a vocal critic of the 's policies and secret expansion.Deák, István, pp. 189–190.
Counsel for the defendants pointed out that the information they had published was true, and – more to the point – that the budgeting for had actually been cited in reports by the 's budgeting commission. The prosecution successfully countered that Kreiser (and Ossietzky as his editor) should have known that the reorganization was a state secret when he questioned the Ministry of Defense on the subject of Abteilung M and the ministry refused to comment on it. Kreiser and Ossietzky were convicted and sentenced by the on 23 November 1931 to eighteen months in prison. Kreiser fled Germany, but Ossietzky remained and was imprisoned, being released at the end of 1932 on the occasion of the Christmas amnesty.Haberman, Frederick W. Peace 1926–1950 (1999), World Scientific, p. 211.
Arrest by the Nazis
Ossietzky continued to be a constant warning voice against militarism and Nazism. In 1932, he published an article in which he stated:Ossietzky, Carl von "Anti-semites (1932)", pp. 276–277 from .
In the same essay, Ossietzky wrote: