Bertha von Suttner, born Countess Kinsky, strongly engaged in the development of pacifism.
Her father was the Austrian Field Marshal Count Kinsky. She spent her childhood in the Kinsky palace on the Old Town Square, and later became governess in the Suttner family, where she fell in love with Arthur Suttner. Due to the opposition of the family to this union, she traveled to Paris where she participated to numerous meetings of emancipated women and
started working for Alfred Nobel. She soon became one of the leading figures of the pacifist movement and published the novel “Lay Down Your Arms!”. Alfred Nobel, with whom she exchanged letters all through her life, strongly supported her in this endeavor. In 1905 she was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The irony of life wanted that the year of her death also marked the start of the biggest war conflict ever to that date.
