Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft – Vereinigte KriegsdienstgegnerInnen (DFG-VK)
On November 9, 1892, the two Austrians and later Nobel Peace Prize winners Bertha von Suttner and Alfred Herrmann Fried, after many years of efforts, succeeded in founding the German Peace Society (DFG) in Berlin. In view of the socio-political situation of the German Empire, it is not surprising that the association was immediately exposed to sharp attacks from reactionary forces: In a politically immobile society that, in line with militant nationalism, pushed for a “place in the sun” in a colonial-imperialist way and granted the military a privileged position in social and political life, the establishment of a peace society had to appear as an anachronism directed centrally against the self-image of the ruling powers.
Although the DFG initially saw itself as a humanitarian, apolitical association that knew that it was in harmony with progress and sought to abolish the irrational institution of war by educating the public and appealing to the powerful, the events of the day increasingly forced the pacifists to become political Opinions. The DFG now resolutely opposed national-imperialist excesses and the upbringing of young people in a chauvinistic spirit and sharply condemned the oppression of national minorities in the German Reich. In the center of their activities were of course the efforts to realize their program of a “constructive” pacifism which wanted to eliminate interstate anarchy by building up international law and which can be outlined using the terms understanding, arbitration and disarmament. The struggle of nations against one another should be replaced by an international legal community that resolved conflicts non-violently by means of arbitration judgments. Fried expanded these program sentences after the disappointing course of the 1st Hague Conference into an independent theory of “organizational pacifism”, which remained the determining ideology of the DFG until the end of the German Empire.
