The Prize (31 page)

‘If that’s all that is worrying you, have no fears about me. I’m sticking strictly to the facts. If you find lies or libel in my copy, you can sue. That’s how sure I am.’

A smile flickered across Jacobsson’s wrinkled features. ‘The Nobel Foundation is a quasi-government institution, Miss Wiley. We approve or disapprove, but we do not sue.’

‘Then we understand each other. Well, I guess I’ve taken enough of your—’

‘One moment, Miss Wiley. Something occurs to me. Since you have been gathering so much information from so great a variety of sources, perhaps it would be to your benefit to add one more story that comes to you straight from the headquarters of the awards.’

Sue Wiley brightened. ‘A story! Any time!’

Jacobsson looked off. ‘If you do not mind, Mr. Craig—’

‘I’m as interested as Miss Wiley.’

‘Please sit down, Miss Wiley. You too, Mr. Craig. I will make it as short as possible. Do you have a pencil, Miss Wiley?’

‘I’m all set.’ She had seated herself across from Jacobsson’s antique walnut desk, fishing pen and notebook from her handbag. Craig stayed on his feet, lighting his pipe again, Jacobsson busied himself with the row of green ledgers on the shelf above his desk, removed a single ledger, and brought it down to the desk behind which he now seated himself. He leafed through the pages until he had located what he was after. He looked up.

‘Miss Wiley,’ he said, ‘as you know, there are five Nobel Prize awards, and they have been given with some regularity almost every year since 1901. The world has come to look upon these awards as the highest achievement—highest honour on earth man can confer upon man. Therefore, the Nobel Prize awards have become a sacred cow. The temptation to journalists, every so often, to prove this sacred cow only a common bovine is irresistible. You will go around the city, and you will find it all too easy to learn our shortcomings—how many times in my too many years I have heard them repeated and broadcast with relish and glee—how we are anti-Russian, how we are pro-German, how we indulge ourselves in nepotism—above all, first and the worst of it, how we vote our prizes out of prejudices and politics and fears. Some of this is truth, and I am the very first to admit it. In fact, whenever I have the honour to take visiting laureates on tours of our academies, I always make it a point to let them know our worst side as well as our best, and Mr. Craig will confirm this. What bothers me, all of us here, the most is that our visitors seize upon our worst side, and too often ignore our best side. I am going to take the liberty of giving you one instance, my favourite, of our best side. I promised you a story, did I not?’

‘You did,’ said Sue Wiley, less brash than earlier.

‘You came here this afternoon wondering if George Bernard Shaw had actually turned down the prize, and I told you he had not. Now, I will tell you the story of another man who was prevailed upon to turn down the prize, and did not, and of his prize that was by all logic and commonsense not to be voted and given, and was voted and given. I will tell you about Carl von Ossietzky, and I will write the name down for you, because I want you to spell it right and not forget it and not let your readers forget it.’

Unhurriedly, Jacobsson block-printed the name Carl von Ossietzky on a piece of notepaper and handed it to Sue Wiley, who accepted it and studied it with bewilderment. Hearing the name, Craig tried to remember where he had heard it before—either at the Royal Banquet or the Hammarlund dinner, one or the other—but still, the name was foreign to his ears, and he was curious about what Jacobsson might have to say of this unknown name.

Jacobsson gazed at his open green ledger, and then he resumed speaking. ‘There is an expression that has gained currency in our day that refers to “the little man”. There are variations on this expression like “the common man” or “a member of the masses”. This is supposed to mean, I presume, the average man on earth who is not distinguished by wealth or fame or authority. From cradle to the grave, he eats and sleeps, does drone’s labour, propagates the species, makes no policies or headlines or scandals, and when he dies, is mourned by none but relatives and a handful of friends, and disappears from the planet as casually and unmissed as the ant one inadvertently steps on every day. Such a man, for forty-two years, was Carl von Ossietzky, a German national who wrote mediocre articles for his bread, and whose one foible—we all of us have one foible—was that he hated militarism after having served four years in the Imperial German Army during the First World War. What lifted Ossietzky from the obscurity of the ranks of “the little man” was his growing obsession that all soldiers were, in his words, “murderers”, and that there was “nothing heroic” about war. Most men know this and think it and hate any memory of killing, and most men live on, doing nothing about it. Ossietzky was the one who decided to do something about it, to eliminate the evil, to practise and preach what he believed.’

Jacobsson looked up from the ledger at Craig, and then at Sue Wiley.

‘His history is brief,’ said Jacobsson, ‘and his accomplishments few. He was a reporter on the
Berliner Volkszeitung
. He was an editor of
Weltbuhne
. He was a secretary of the German Peace Society. He was one of the founders of the international No More War Society. He was an advocate of a new holiday to be called Anti-War Day. So far, admirable, yes, and obsessive, but not particularly meaningful. Then, one day in 1929, with more courage than commonsense, he published an article in German exposing disarmed Germany’s secret war budget, and telling the world that his Fatherland was breaking its treaty pledges by secretly building an army and an air force. For this, Ossietzky was charged with treason in 1931 and thrown into prison for almost two years. The confinement was shattering, not only because he had weak lungs and suffered from the early ravages of tuberculosis, but because he knew what evil was afoot and wanted freedom to shout a warning to the duped world.

‘When he came out of prison, there was a new name and power on the land, and the name and power was that of Adolf Hitler. Ossietzky blindly resumed his pacifistic campaign. Friends reminded him of the consequences and begged him to flee across the border. To them Ossietzky replied, “A man who speaks from across a border has a hollow voice.” He stayed in Germany. He hooted Hitler when others cheered him. He told his countrymen that “German war spirit contains nothing but the desire for conquest.” He was a tiny thorn to Hitler, but a thorn, and he must be plucked.

‘On the night of February 27, 1933—it is here in my Notes—the German Reichstag building in Berlin went up in flames, and out of the ashes rose the Third Reich. On that night the thorn was plucked, for on that night Carl von Ossietzky, among others, was arrested once more and imprisoned as an enemy of the state. For the first time, there were those who realized that a voice of sanity had been stilled. As Ossietzky suffered torture in the Sonnenburg concentration camp, the German League for the Rights of Man sent his name to Oslo as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. But he was “the little man”, and my colleagues ignored him. The following year, news of Ossietzky’s suffering and martyrdom circled the globe, and suddenly the Nobel Peace Committee found itself inundated with official nominations of his name. Romain Rolland nominated him. Albert Einstein nominated him. Thomas Mann nominated him. Jane Addams nominated him. The National Assembly of Switzerland nominated him. The Labour Party of Norway nominated him. I could go on for hours with the nominations that poured into Oslo. No longer could “the little man” be ignored.

‘Now, Miss Wiley, you will see the difficulties that confront a Nobel Prize committee. On the one hand, the intellects of the world were urging the Norwegians to honour and reward a man who had defied the leader of the nation that was Norway’s greatest threat to existence. On the other hand, the Nobel judges were being reminded of the possible outcome of such an award. Inside Norway itself, Knut Hamsun, who had become a Fascist, was writing against Ossietzky, and Vidkun Quisling was calling “the little man” a traitor, in print. The League of Patriots in Norway were demanding that Hitler or Mussolini, not the detestable Ossietzky, receive the 1935 Peace Prize. And outside Norway, the pressure was as strong, stronger. Goebbels was cursing Ossietzky as Jew and Communist, although he was neither a Jew nor a Communist. Hitler’s
Schwarzes Korps
was warning the Nobel judges that a vote for Ossietzky “would be a slap in the face of the German people.” Gِring who knew the Nobel family through his first wife—the Swedish Baroness Karin Fock, who died of tuberculosis in 1932—put himself in touch with the Nobel heirs, and they allegedly advised the Nobel Peace Committee to turn down the Ossietzky nomination.

‘Try to imagine, if you can, the state of mind of each of the five judges on the Nobel Peace Committee. One of the judges was Dr. Halvdan Koht, Foreign Minister of Norway. Another judge was Johan Ludwig Mowinckel, who had been Prime Minister of Norway and was the leader of the Left. Both were powerful men who favoured Ossietzky, but both were practical politicians who knew that if they made Ossietzky a laureate, they were insulting Hitler and inviting him to break off diplomatic relations with their country. In its voting session, the five committee-men debated themselves hoarse. At last, the decision was made. It could not be Ossietzky. The survival of Norway came first. There was talk of giving the prize to Tomé
ڑ
Masaryk, of Czechoslovakia, but even this seemed unsafe. At last, to squirm out of the trouble, the committee determined to give the prize to Prince Carl, of Sweden, for some Red Cross activities of his a decade and a half earlier. But before the vote, it was found that Prince Carl was ineligible, since his nomination had reached Oslo two days after the final deadline. And so the committee threw up its collective hands, and told the world there would be no Peace Prize in 1935—as there is none this year—because there was a war in Africa, and the time was “inappropriate”.’

Throughout this recital, Sue Wiley and Craig had not moved from their places. Jacobsson stared at them meditatively.

‘You wonder about Ossietzky himself, perhaps?’ he went on. ‘Ossietzky was now in the Papenburg concentration camp. The Nazi tortures had ceased, but they did not matter. He was dying of tuberculosis. Had he died at once, the controversy would have been solved, and the world and ourselves the worse off for it. But he did not die yet. He was of indomitable spirit. He lived on, and so, quickly, it was the year 1936, and once more the Nobel Peace Committee was faced with his nomination. Again, it seemed that everyone outside Germany was presenting his name, and you will be happy to know that the names of United States citizens were among the foremost who nominated him. The Nobel Committee polled itself. Two were against Ossietzky, two were for him, and one judge was undecided. Then, overnight, the two who were against Ossietzky because of their political positions—Dr. Koht and Johan Mowinckel—resigned from the committee, and were replaced by substitute judges with no diplomatic entanglements. The day of November 23, 1936, as Germany shouted its threats, the final vote was taken. Yes, Miss Wiley, Carl von Ossietzky was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1935.

‘Our judges had shown their courage, and now the last act of courage was in the hands of the frail Ossietzky. What would he do? Because of his notoriety, Goebbels had moved him from the concentration camp to the West End Hospital in Berlin. There Gِring called on him, stood over him, commanded him to turn down our prize. Ossietzky would not give Gِring his answer, but he gave us and our colleagues in Oslo his answer. He smuggled out a cable thanking us and accepting the Nobel Peace award. Hitler’s newspapers ranted, but Ossietzky was defiant to the end. When foreign correspondents, in the presence of the Gestapo, questioned him, he told them that he was proud and reminded them that the armaments race was “insanity”. From his bed, he received a Nobel delegation which congratulated him. His prize of $39,303 he never saw. He signed a power of attorney to have a man in Oslo, who represented a lawyer in Berlin, accept his money for him. It was transferred to a Berlin bank. It was embezzled. It did not matter to Ossietzky. He had won the greater prize. Because of “the little man”, Hitler banned the Nobel awards from Germany and invented his own National State Prizes for the two leading Aryan scientists and a leading Aryan author. But still, Hitler was not satisfied. In 1940, when he marched into Norway and conquered that country, he arrested the entire Nobel committee. It did not matter, because by then the entire free world had been awakened and was fighting, and preparing to fight, for peace. By then, also, Ossietzky had been dead for two and a half years. But I like to think that he has never died.’

Jacobsson paused, and gently closed his green ledger.

‘We have had more famous laureates who have won our Nobel Peace Prize,’ he said. ‘So many more famous names. Jean Henri Dunant. Elihu Root. Woodrow Wilson. Fridtjof Nansen. Aristide Briand. Cordell Hull. Ralph Bunche. Albert Schweitzer. General George Marshall. Philip Noel-Baker. Yes, famous names. But I suspect that of them all, Carl von Ossietzky was the greatest. And because of him, this one moment in our history, our Nobel committees and judges knew greatness, too.’