German anarchist-pacifist whose most famous book Krieg dem Kriege! Guerre à la guerre. War against War (1924) documents the horrors of war in pictures. In 1925 he founded the Anti-War Museum in Berlin. Later he published, inter alia, the weekly newspaper “The Black Flag”, which temporarily reached a circulation of 40,000 copies.
Ernst Friedrich was the thirteenth child of a washerwoman and a saddler. After graduating from elementary school, he began a book printing apprenticeship in 1908, but he soon left to train as an actor. He earned his living by hiring himself as a factory worker. In 1911 he joined the SPD. From 1912 to 1914 he travelled through Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland. In 1914 he made his acting debut in his hometown and also appeared at the Royal Court Theatre in Potsdam.
Conscripted in the First World War, he declared himself a conscientious objector. Since he refused to wear a uniform, he was assigned to an observation ward for the mentally ill.
After the war, he was the organizer of the “Free Youth” in Berlin, an anarcho-syndicalist youth movement, which strongly supported anti-militarism. In the interwar period, he was a political agitator against the war. He was one of the speakers at the anti-war rally in front of the Berlin Cathedral on 31 July 1921 which was attended by over 100,000 demonstrators.
His publications were banned or confiscated and Friedrich was always in court. After several criminal records he was sentenced in 1930 for his political activities to a year in prison.
Even before the seizure of power in 1933, the Nazis terrorized him. After the Reichstag fire, he was arrested on 28 February 1933. His museum was destroyed by the Nazis and after his release he fled in December 1933 through Europe.
In 1936 he opened a new museum in Brussels, which however was destroyed by German troops after their invasion in 1940. Ernst Friedrich fled to France with his son Ernst. There, the two were interned by the Vichy regime. After 18 months he was able to escape. In 1943 he was tracked down by the Gestapo. After another escape, he joined the Resistance. Friedrich, the ‘pacifist,’ fought in the liberation of Nîmes and Alès. He was wounded twice. He rescued about seventy children of a Jewish orphanage before their deportation.
After the war Friedrich became a member of the Socialist Party of France. Since 1947 he campaigned in Paris for the reconstruction of a new anti-war museum. He received $1,000 from an international fund. With this he bought a barge, which he rebuilt as the peace boat Arche de Noé. It was moored on a Seine Island near Villeneuve-la-Garenne.
In 1954 he received compensation for the loss of his property and ill-health during the Third Reich. He then bought about 3,000 square metres of forest on a Seine island near Le Perreux-sur-Marne, where he built an international youth centre.
Friedrich, who was tormented in his last years by severe depression, died on 2 May 1967, aged 73, in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France. In Berlin, the anti-war museum was re-established in 1982.

Link to Wikipedia biography (German)