Carl von Ossietzky

Carl von Ossietzky was born on 3 October 1889 and became editor-in-chief of Die Weltbühne, where in the late 1920s he published exposés detailing Germany's violation of the Treaty of Versailles by secretly rebuilding an air force and training pilots in the Soviet Union. In 1931 he was convicted of treason and espionage, sentenced to eighteen months, then granted amnesty in December 1932. After the Nazis took power he remained a vocal critic of militarism; following the 1933 Reichstag fire he was arrested and sent to Esterwegen concentration camp, where his brutal torture was documented by the International Red Cross. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936 but forbidden from travelling to Norway to accept it. After five years of mistreatment in the camps, he died of tuberculosis in a Berlin hospital on 4 May 1938.