Quidde, Ludwig, << KVIHD uh, LOOT vihk >> (1858-1941), a German historian and politician, was one of the leading pacifists of his day. A pacifist is a person who is opposed to war and favors settling all disputes between nations by peaceful means. Quidde was awarded part of the 1927 Nobel Prize for peace for his writings on and lifelong work for peace. He shared the award with Ferdinand Buisson , the president of the French League of Human Rights.
Quidde’s interest in the peace movement prompted him to become a member of the German Peace Society in 1892. From 1914 to 1929, he was chairman of the organization.
Quidde was born in Bremen, Germany, on March 23, 1858. He studied at the universities of Strasbourg (then in Germany, now in France) and of Göttingen. In 1889, Quidde founded the Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft (German Review of Historical Sciences). He edited the review until 1895. In 1890, he joined the Prussian Historical Institute in Rome, Italy. Two years later, he returned to Munich, Germany, where he entered politics and became a member of the Bavarian Landtag (Assembly).
In 1894, Quidde wrote Caligula: Eine Studie uber Romischen Casarenwahnism (Caligula: A Study in Roman Caesarean Madness), a supposedly historical account of the Roman emperor Caligula . The book was, in fact, a thinly veiled satirical attack on Germany’s Emperor Wilhelm II and contemporary Prussian society (see Wilhelm (Wilhelm II) ). The authorities understood this and imprisoned Quidde briefly in 1896. In 1895, he had become an active member of the anti-Prussian and antimilitary German People’s Party. He was elected to the German Reichstag (a branch of parliament now called the Bundestag) in 1907.
During World War I (1914-1918), Quidde openly opposed the annexing of foreign land to Germany. In 1919, he was elected to a seat in the National Assembly that met in Weimar to write Germany’s first republican constitution. After the war, Quidde supported Germany’s claims to be admitted to the League of Nations and maintained his antimilitary stance. When the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, Quidde moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life. He died on March 4, 1941.
