Editor of Die Weltbühne who exposed the secret rearmament of the Reichswehr and won the Nobel Peace Prize in a Nazi camp
Journalist and pacifist, born in Hamburg in 1889. He became a pacifist around 1913 and in 1919 was secretary of the German Peace Society. In 1927 he succeeded Kurt Tucholsky as editor-in-chief of Die Weltbühne. After the paper exposed the secret training of a Reichswehr air unit in 1929, he was convicted of treason and espionage in 1931 and sentenced to eighteen months, and was released in the Christmas amnesty at the end of 1932. Arrested again after the Reichstag fire in February 1933, he was abused in the Sonnenburg and Esterwegen concentration camps. At the book burnings that May the Fire Oaths gave his writings to the flames together with Tucholsky's, "against insolence and arrogance". In 1936 he was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize but was not allowed to travel to Oslo, and in 1938 he died of tuberculosis in a Berlin hospital, still in police custody.
Activities and affiliations
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1911–1933
Literature and arts
Career Timeline
- 1908Joined the German Peace Society
- 1911First contribution to the weekly Das freie Volk
- 1919Secretary of the German Peace Society
- 1920–1924Journalist at the Berliner Volks-Zeitung
- 1924.03Co-founded the Republican Party
- 1927Editor-in-chief of Die Weltbühne
- 1931.11.23Sentenced to eighteen months for treason and espionage
- 1932.05.10–12.22Imprisoned in Tegel
- 1933.02.28Arrested after the Reichstag fire
- 1933.04.06Taken to Sonnenburg concentration camp
- 1933.05.10Writings burned at the book burnings
- 1936.11.231935 Nobel Peace Prize awarded