QUIDDE, LUDWIG

Quidde, Ludwig: translation

(1858-1941)

historian and pacifist; chairman of theDeutsche Friedensgesellschaft(German Peace Society*). Born to a wealthy Bre-men wholesaler, he took a doctorate in 1881 at Gottingen in medieval history and soon launched a brilliant historical career. He gained a lofty editorial ap-pointment in 1885 at Munich's Bavarian Academy of Sciences, was elected to the Historical Commission in 1887, and helped found theDeutsche Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft(from 1898, theHistorische Vierteljahrschrift)in1889, serving as its original editor. During a two-year sabbatical (1890-1892) he directed the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome.

From 1892 Quidde was increasingly linked with groups devoted to peace and international understanding.His 1894 parodyCaliguladestroyed his academic career and earned him three months in prison forMajestatsbeleidigung. Al-though he was forced to resign from the Bavarian Academy in 1896, he had already committed himself to politics. Joining the regional South German Peo-ple's Party in the mid-1890s, he sat in the Bavarian Landtag during 1907-1918 and then represented the DDP in the National Assembly.* But he was above all a pacifist ("pacifism," he claimed, "is the translation of the democratic principle into foreign policy"). He was elected chairman of the Bavarian branch of the Peace Society in 1894 and served from 1900 as German delegate to the Inter-national Peace Bureau in Geneva. During 1914-1929 he was president of the German Peace Society. He spent much of World War I in Switzerland. His pacifism was tempered by a belief that Germany was not solely responsible for the war, a view that stirred opposition within the international peace movement.

Although Quidde was opposed to the Versailles Treaty,* his aversion to the to the Reichswehr* led the DDP to drop him from its candidate list in 1920. He thereafter promoted disarmament* at the League of Nations. When he was imprisoned in 1924 for revealing secrets about German rearmament, Britain elicited both his release and the dismissal of treason charges. His outspoken support of disarmament brought him the Nobel Peace Prize (shared with France's Ferdi-nand Buisson) in 1927.

In a vain bid to preserve unity in Germany's increasingly disparate pacifist movement, Quidde led a newSpitzenverbandduring 1921-1929 known as the German Peace Cartel. But younger colleagues increasingly disparaged him as out of date; finally, in 1929, he was forced to surrender his presidency of the Peace Society and soon resigned from the organization. One of the Democrats who refused to transfer their allegiance in 1930 to the DStP, he helped found the Radical Democratic Party in November 1930. In March 1933 he emigrated to Geneva, where in 1935 he nominated Carl von Ossietzky* as Nobel Peace laureate.