Alfred Hermann Fried

Alfred Hermann Fried was born in Vienna, Austria. Leaving school at age fifteen, he apprenticed to a bookseller before moving to Berlin in 1883, where he opened his own printing and publishing house. In 1891, profoundly moved by Baroness Bertha von Suttner's anti-war masterpiece Lay Down Your Arms! (Die Waffen nieder!), Fried reached out to Suttner, establishing a life-long partnership that transformed the peace movement in Central Europe.

In 1892, Fried and Suttner founded the monthly journal Die Waffen nieder! in Berlin, which Fried edited until 1899, when he established Die Friedens-Warte (The Peace Watch), which became the preeminent intellectual peace publication in the German-speaking world. In November 1892, they founded the German Peace Society (Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft), organizing dozens of branches across Germany and Austria.

Fried distinguished himself by moving beyond emotional or moral pacifism, articulating what he termed 'scientific pacifism' or 'organizational pacifism'. In books like The Foundations of Revolutionary Pacifism, Fried argued that war was not caused by human nature, but by international anarchy, and could only be permanently eradicated by building supranational institutions, international courts, and economic federations. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1911 alongside Tobias Asser, Fried spent World War I in exile in Switzerland, tirelessly cataloging peace proposals for a future League of Nations before dying in poverty in Vienna in 1921.