FRIED, ALFRED HERMANN

FRIED, ALFRED HERMANN (1864–1921), Austrian publicist and Nobel peace prize winner. Born in Vienna, Fried served as an Austrian diplomat for a short time but became discouraged and went to Berlin where he became a book-dealer and publisher. After 1891 he devoted himself to pacifist propaganda and founded and edited a number of journals for this purpose, among them Die Waffen Nieder which was owned by the famous Austrian pacifist-propagandist, Baroness von Suttner. Fried was the author of more than 70 books and pamphlets devoted to the advancement of peace and of nearly 2,000 newspaper articles. A member of the Berne Bureau and the International Institute for Peace, he was also European secretary of the Conciliation Internationale, secretary general of the Union Internationale de la Presse pour la Paix, and founder of the German and Austrian peace societies. Fried won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1911. At the time of the Hague peace conferences (1899–1907) Fried was in constant touch with Ivan *Bliokh, the man who persuaded the czar to convene the conferences. His pacifist approach led to his being accused of treason; he left Austria on the outbreak of World War i and spent the war years in Switzerland. He was a prominent figure at the international workers meeting in Berne which fought to prepare a formula for a negotiated peace. After the war he advocated a European union of states similar to the Pan-American system. Fried's publications include Handbuch der Friedensbewegung (1905); Die Grundlagen des revolutionaeren Pacifismus (1908); Der Kaiser und der Weltfrieden (1910), a defense of Kaiser William ii's policies; and Der Weltprotest gegen den Versailler Frieden (1920), an attack on the Versailles peace settlement.

bibliography:

R. Goldscheid, Alfred Fried (Ger., 1922); H.F. Peterson, Power and International Order; an Analytical Study of Four Schools of Thought and their Approaches to the War, the Peace and a Post-War System, 1914–1919 (1964). add. bibliography: E. Pistiner, "Der vergessene österreichisch-jüdische Friedens-Nobelpreistraeger Alfred Hermann Fried," in: zgj, 9 (1972), 17–32; A. Schou,Histoire de l'imternationalisme iii – Du Congrès de Vienna jusqu'a la Première Guerre Mondiale, 8 (1963), 365–68.

[Josef J. Lador-Lederer]