1 Kate Kühl (1899 – 1970), “Kulicke” is what Kurt Tucholsky called one of his favorite performers, Kate Kühl (1899-1970). “General! General! Just don’t you dare do it again!” blared the cabaret artist, who wrote the anti-war song “Red Melody” in 1922. She survived World War II doing odd jobs in Hitler’s Reich. Briefly a member of the KPD after the war, then disappointed by the SPD in the west. Kate Kühl is buried in the cemetery at the Olympic Stadium.
2 Johann Philipp von Schönborn (1605–1673), was considered the Prince of Peace. As a powerful politician of his time – archbishop of Mainz and thus the first elector in the empire, prince-bishop of Würzburg – he succeeded against the will of the imperial court in Vienna in getting the imperial estates to participate in the peace congress in Münster. He used his position to make a significant contribution to the success of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and later to secure the result through clever alliance politics.
3 Jean Jaurès (1859 – 1914), is the founder of the newspaper “L’Humanité”, which he ran until his death. At the time, the newspaper was the central organ of the French section of the Workers’ International, of which Jaurès was also a leader. After the Sarajevo assassination attempt on the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne in 1914, he desperately tried to prevent the impending outbreak of the First World War. As a member of the National Assembly, on the morning of July 31, 1914, he made another attempt to avert France’s impending entry into the war. In the evening of the same day, he was shot dead by a nationalist in a Parisian café.
4 Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) became a self-confessed pacifist through his composition teacher Frank Bridge. In 1962 he wrote his “War Requiem” for the city of Coventry, which was bombed by the Wehrmacht. It is a document of humanism; at the premiere in the newly built cathedral, the British Peter Pears and the German Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau performed the male vocal parts.
5 Aristophanes (c. 450/444 BC – c. 380 BC) was a Greek comedy poet. One of his works was called “Lysistrata”, first performed in 411 BC. The play deals with the struggle of some women against men as the cause of war and the suffering associated with it. Armed with this realization, the women of Athens and Sparta conspire to enforce peace. Under the leadership of Lysistrata, they occupy the Acropolis and from then on refuse their husbands sexually.
6 Kathe Kollwitz (1867 – 1945). The experiences of three wars shaped the work of the sculptor and graphic artist. She was still a child during the Franco-Prussian War, lost a son in World War I, and was bombed out in World War II. One of her most famous works is the sculpture “Pietà”: a mother with her dead son. On the initiative of Helmut Kohl, an enlarged copy was placed in the Neue Wache in Berlin.
7 Constanze Hallgarten (1881 – 1969) was one of the leading women in the German peace movement. Already in 1923 she was blacklisted by the Nazis. After the “seizure of power” she fled first to France and then to the USA in 1941. In 1955 she returned to Germany and was involved in the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom until her death.
8 Corder Catchpool (1883–1952) was a British Quaker who worked in Berlin from 1931 to 1936. In July 1934, Catchpool wrote a letter to Hitler requesting the release of the pacifist journalists Fritz Kuster and Carl von Ossietzky. Ossietzky became world famous through the propaganda of German emigrants, he received the Nobel Peace Prize, but he was never released, he died as a result of the concentration camp internment. Fritz Küster, on the other hand, was released from Buchenwald concentration camp in August 1938.
9 Louise Weiss (1893-1983). Her family fled Alsace, annexed by Germany, in 1871. Against her father’s resistance, she became a teacher and became involved early on in international cooperation, European integration and women’s rights. In 1918 she founded the magazine “L’Europe Nouvelle”, later the “L’Ecole de la Paix”. After 1945 she was a co-founder of the French Institute for War and Conflict Research. She was elected to the European Parliament in 1979 at the age of 86. One of the new buildings bears her name.
10 Jane Addams (1860 – 1935) was an American feminist and sociologist. In 1889 she opened the Hull House in Chicago, one of the first so-called settlement houses in the USA, in which education and social services were offered free of charge. In 1915 she founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, but she rejected US participation in the war. In 1931 she received the Nobel Peace Prize.
