Peace: 1926

2) Briand, Aristide, pronounced bree AHN, a rees TEED (1862-1932), was a French statesman who worked toward achieving peace in Europe. He served as France's premier 11 times before his death on March 7, 1932.

Briand was born on March 28, 1862, in Nantes, France. He began his career as a lawyer and a journalist. He became a leader of the French Socialist Party and was elected to France's Parliament in 1902.

Briand believed that French security required peace in Europe. He called for cooperation with France's former enemy, Germany. His efforts led to the 1925 Locarno treaties, including a pact in which Belgium, France, and Germany agreed never to fight each other again. Briand and Gustav Stresemann of Germany shared the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize for their work.

Briand and United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg proposed the Pact of Paris, also known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Over 50 nations eventually signed the pact, vowing not to go to war. Briand was Europe's leading supporter of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations.

Contributor: Gary B. Ostrower, Ph.D., Professor of History, Alfred University.

2) Stresemann, Gustav, pronounced SHTRAY zuh mahn, GOOS tahf (1878-1929), was a German statesman who served as chancellor and foreign minister of the Weimar Republic, the German republic established in 1919. He was responsible for restoring order to Germany after World War I (1914-1918). Stresemann received the Nobel Prize for peace in 1926 for persuading Germany to accept plans for reparations (payments for war damages). He shared the prize with Aristide Briand.

In 1901, Stresemann became a clerk in Dresden's Association of German Chocolate Manufacturers. The following year, he founded the Association of Saxon Industrialists, and he remained its legal representative until 1911. He rose in the ranks of the National Liberal Party and became head of the party in 1917.

Initially, Stresemann was an ardent supporter of Germany's policies before and during World War I. He opposed the Treaty of Versailles, which was signed at the end of the war, and argued for a strong navy and unrestricted submarine warfare. By 1918, however, Stresemann began to realize that military force could ultimately prove disastrous. In late 1918, he founded the German People's Party. In 1923, he served briefly as chancellor of Germany and, in that post, restored order in Bavaria after the failure of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's Bavarian Putsch.

From 1923 to 1929, Stresemann served as Germany's minister of foreign affairs. He became known as the greatest master of German foreign policy since Otto von Bismarck held the post in the 1860's. Stresemann signed the Locarno Pact in 1925. He argued that the nations of Europe could not make war with one another without being involved in "common ruin." He also signed a peace agreement, the Treaty of Berlin, with Russia in April 1926.

Stresemann was born in Berlin. He studied literature, history, and political economy at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig.

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