Carl von Ossietzky

Carl von Ossietzky (1889-1938), German journalist, pacifist, and Nobel laureate, born in Hamburg. As a young man he was a member of the German peace society of the Austrian pacifist Alfred Hermann Fried but served as a conscript in the German army throughout World War I. In Berlin after the war he was an associate editor of the daily Volkszeitung, which he left in 1927 to become editor of the left-wing weekly Weltbühne. His outspoken antimilitarist articles led to his trial and conviction in 1931 for allegedly divulging military secrets, but he was released in a general amnesty in December 1932. Two months later he was arrested as an enemy of the new National Socialist regime and imprisoned. Within four years he contracted tuberculosis and was transferred to a hospital, but remained in custody. When Ossietzky was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize, Adolf Hitler took offense, and German citizens were thereafter forbidden to accept any Nobel prizes.