Peace movement

01How did the peace movement begin?

The organised peace movement in Germany begins at the end of the 19th century. In 1889 the Austrian writer Bertha von Suttner published the novel Lay Down Your Arms (Die Waffen nieder), one of the most influential books against war of its time. In 1905 she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Together with Alfred Hermann Fried she founded the German Peace Society (Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft) in Berlin on 9 November 1892. Fried also received the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1911. The society is regarded as the oldest German peace organisation and still exists today.

In 1914 the International Fellowship of Reconciliation followed, founded at a conference in Konstanz shortly before the First World War began. Christians from several countries wanted to avert the threatening war.

02Where do the Easter Marches come from?

In the young Federal Republic, protest formed above all against nuclear weapons. On 7 March 1958 the committee Fight Atomic Death (Kampf dem Atomtod) was founded, and in April of the same year mass rallies followed in several major cities against equipping the Bundeswehr with nuclear weapons.

The model for the Easter Marches came from Britain. There, at Easter 1958, around 10,000 people demonstrated against nuclear weapons with a four-day march. In 1960 the first Easter March in the Federal Republic took place in northern Germany.

The Easter Marches still exist today. They are one of the oldest forms of protest of the German peace movement and are organised every year at Easter by local initiatives.

03What happened in the 1980s?

At the beginning of the 1980s the peace movement in the Federal Republic became a mass movement. The trigger was the planned stationing of new American intermediate-range missiles. In November 1980 the Krefeld Appeal called on the federal government to withdraw its consent to this. More than three million people signed it.

On 10 October 1981 just under 300,000 people came to the Hofgarten in Bonn. It was the largest demonstration in the history of the Federal Republic up to that point. In autumn 1983, on 22 October, demonstrators formed a human chain 108 kilometres long between Neu-Ulm and Stuttgart.

The movement was diverse: churches, trade unions, environmental groups, doctors, students and many people without a firm tie to any organisation. New groups such as the Federation for Social Defence also emerged during this time.

04Was there a peace movement in the GDR?

Yes, it emerged above all under the roof of the Protestant churches. In November 1980 Peace Decades took place for the first time, ten days of services and discussions, at the same time in East and West Germany. The motto was Make peace without weapons (Frieden schaffen ohne Waffen).

As a symbol the churches chose an image from the Bible: Swords to Ploughshares, after the prophet Micah. In 1981 it was printed as a fabric patch, and soon well over 100,000 of them were in circulation. From January 1982 wearing it was banned at educational institutions, and the patches were often removed by force.

In Leipzig, on 20 September 1982, the first peace prayer outside the Peace Decade took place in St Nicholas Church (Nikolaikirche). The prayers became the meeting point of a growing movement. On 9 October 1989 well over 70,000 people marched peacefully through Leipzig, a decisive day of the Peaceful Revolution.

05What has remained of the peace movement?

Many organisations from the history of the peace movement still exist today, from the German Peace Society to pax christi and IPPNW. The Easter Marches take place every year, and the peace prayers in St Nicholas Church in Leipzig are still held, every Monday at 5 pm.

Alongside them a field of work has emerged that hardly existed before: professional civil conflict transformation. Since 1999 the Civil Peace Service has sent professionals to conflict regions, and networks such as the Platform for Civil Conflict Transformation connect the organisations.

The right peace policy is still argued about in Germany today, including within the peace movement. This page describes its history and does not judge any current positions.

06What did people protest against in the 1950s?

After the Second World War, the first major dispute was about whether the young Federal Republic should have soldiers again. From 1949 to 1955, the so-called Ohne-mich movement ("count me out") argued against rearmament. It reached from conservative, liberal and religious circles to the left. On 9 October 1950, Federal Interior Minister Gustav Heinemann resigned in protest against the government majority's stance on rearmament.

On 29 January 1955, opposition politicians, trade unionists and theologians rejected the Paris Agreements of 1954 in Frankfurt's Paulskirche with the German Manifesto. These agreements paved the way for West Germany to join NATO and build up the Bundeswehr.

After that, nuclear weapons moved to the centre. On 15 March 1957, the United States announced that its forces in the Federal Republic had nuclear weapons. On 12 April 1957, 18 leading German nuclear scientists called on the federal government in the Göttingen Manifesto to renounce nuclear arms for the Bundeswehr. A few days later, around 150 broadcasters worldwide carried an address by Albert Schweitzer, who called for an end to nuclear weapons tests.

On 25 March 1958, the Bundestag decided to equip the Bundeswehr with nuclear weapons within NATO if no general disarmament agreement was reached. Hamburg and Bremen then planned public consultations on nuclear armament. The Federal Constitutional Court declared them unconstitutional on 30 July 1958. The movement later built on these campaigns of the 1950s.

07What was the NATO Double-Track Decision?

On 12 December 1979, 14 NATO foreign and defence ministers agreed on a decision with two parts. The first provided for modernising intermediate-range missiles in Western Europe from 1983 with Pershing II missiles and cruise missiles. The second offered the Soviet Union negotiations on limiting these weapons beforehand. Hence the name double-track.

The background was that the Soviet Union had replaced its intermediate-range missiles aimed at Western Europe with new SS-20 missiles. Weapons of this range had not been part of the arms control treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union. The talks in Geneva brought no breakthrough by the fall of 1983.

The large demonstrations of these years were directed against the planned deployment, from Bonn's Hofgarten in 1981 to the peace week in October 1983. On 22 November 1983, the Bundestag approved the deployment nonetheless, in a roll-call vote of 296 to 226 with one abstention. On 25 November, the first Pershing II missiles arrived in the Federal Republic.

Four years later the situation changed. On 8 December 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union signed an agreement in Washington on the complete elimination of intermediate-range nuclear weapons. It was the first agreement to ban an entire category of nuclear weapons.