82. Ossietzky, Carl Von
secret rearmament of Germany, and carl von ossietzky was to for Human Rights, byHellmut von Gerlach, a At this point, ossietzky, ill with tuberculosis, had
http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Biographies/MainBiographies/O/Ossietzky/Ossi |
Ossietzky, Carl von Carl von Ossietzky (October 3, 1889-May 4, 1938) was born in Hamburg, though his father, a civil servant, had originally come from a village near the German-Polish border. Seven years after Ossietzky's father died in 1891, his mother married Gustav Walther, a Social Democrat, who was influential in shaping Ossietzky's later political attitudes.
Ossietzky's academic achievement being uneven, he left school at the age of seventeen to become an administrative civil servant in his native city. He soon turned to journalism, the profession in which he was to make a career, his first work appearing in Das Freie Volk [The Free People], the weekly organ of the Demokratische Vereinigung [Democratic Union]. On July 5, 1913, an article by Ossietzky criticizing a pro-military court decision in Erfurt drew charges of «insult to the common good» from the Prussian War Ministry. When Ossietzky was called to make a court appearance some time after his marriage on May 22, 1914, to the Englishwoman Maud Woods, his young wife secretly made arrangements to pay his fine.
Though Ossietzky's health was poor, he was called up for military service in June, 1916, with the Bavarian Pioneer Regiment. After the war, Ossietzky, now a confirmed pacifist as well as democrat, returned to Hamburg where he stirred public opinion by speeches on his doctrine of educating people to a «peace mentality», became president of the local chapter of the German Peace Society, and founded Der Wegweiser [The Signpost], an enterprise which soon failed because of lack of financial backing. | |
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