Carl+von+Ossietzky

Carol von Ossietzky Carl was born in Hamburg Germany in 1889. He was born into a Germany that was in transition. His life went across two world conflicts with Germany. Germany is a country in Europe that is landlocked and is the 63rd largest country in the world. He was a journalist by profession who was staunchly against war and the re-militarization of the German government. He became a pacifist after serving in the military beginning in 1916. He used his power as a journalist to promote his anti-war feelings and to uncover the remilitarization of Germany, along with the power of secret paramilitary groups. He became the editor in chief of Die Weltbühne, which means The World Stage. Carl often got in trouble for his work and was even sentenced to a month in jail for libel against the Reichswehr in reference to the allowing of paramilitary organizations. Carl was sent to a concentration camp after being arrested by the secret police, where despite his poor health, he was required to do hard labor. While he was imprisoned in the camp he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He did not decline the nomination even though there was pressure by the government to do so. He won the award and the German government declared that no other German could ever accept any Nobel Prize. Carl’s lawyer was sentenced to two years of hard labor for taking most of Carl’s prize money. Carl died in 1938 after being in poor health for several years, including suffering with tuberculosis while he was still in the concentration camp.

Most likely at this point in the year I would have already provided background information about what the Nobel Prizes are, who they are given to, what type of prizes go along with the honor etc. I would introduce Carl during a unit on the Holocaust. I would use him as an example of the censorship that occurs during wartime. I would tie his experiences in with the life of Anne Frank and possibility in with the book __The Boy in the Striped Pajamas__, either through my reading a section of the book in class or if the students were reading it in Language Arts. I would ask students to write their own newspaper stories concerning the Holocaust, concentration camps, and the government of Germany leading up to WWII. Each student would create his or her own article on a different topic and create a class newspaper in the spirit of Carol’s work. I would also have the students brainstorm definitions for the term “pacifist”. We could connect Carl’s pacifism to the ideas held by Martin Luther King Jr. Showing the link between a man that the students probably didn’t know anything about to a well-known American icon would help them to better understand his work and his beliefs.