Carl von Ossietzky

From Philosopedia

Ossietzky, Carl von (3 October 1889 - 4 May 1938)

Ossietzky, a German pacifist, was the Nobel Prize winner in 1935.

Following World War I, Ossietzky edited the antimilitarist weekly Weltbühne from 1927. In 1932, he was imprisoned for articles in that publication.

Upon being awarded a Nobel Prize but warned that if he accepted he would be punished, he wrote

• After much consideration, I have made the decision to accept the Nobel Peace Prize which has fallen to me. I cannot share the view put forward to me by the representatives of the Secret State Police that in doing so I exclude myself from German society. The Nobel Peace Prize is not a sign of an internal political struggle, but of understanding between peoples. As a recipient of the prize, I will do my best to encourage this understanding and as a German I will always bear in mind Germany's justifiable interests in Europe.

After Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, he was removed (1936) to a prison hospital shortly before the final announcement that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize.

The German government protested and barred all Germans from future acceptance of a Nobel Prize. Ossietzky died two years later. Originally a Catholic, Ossietzky had quit the church.

In May 1936 he was sent to the Westend Hospital in Berlin-Charlottenburg because of his serious tuberculosis, but he was watched by the Gestapo. He died in the Nordend hospital in Berlin-Pankow, still in police custody of tuberculosis and from the after-effects of the abuse he suffered in the concentration camps.

In 1991, the University of Oldenburg was renamed Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg in his honor. {RE}