Rosa Luxemburg: Red Rosa She was a teacher, theoretician, ideologue, and communist activist; A lifelong pacifist and antiwar campaigner. She was to die a revolutionary martyr’s death.
Red Rosa Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Zamosc, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire, on 5 March, 1871, she was a quiet and studious child. She became interested in politics from an early age. Her dissident activities brought her to the attention of the Authorities and she wisely left Poland in early 1889 and settled in Zurich, where she studied law and political economy. She soon made the acquaintance of the other socialist exiles in the Russian émigré community including Georgi Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod, Alexandra Kollontai and Leo Jogiches. In 1893, she joined with Jogiches to form the Social Democratic Party of Poland. It made very little progress, banned as it was, and Rosa was forced to edit its journal, Sprawa Bobotnicza (Workers' Cause) from Paris and have it distributed illegally. In 1895, she married a German national, Gustav Lubeck, not out of affection but simply to gain German citizenship. She settled in Berlin and joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and soon became deeply embroiled in the arguments between orthodox Marxists and reformers that had split the party down the middle. She supported the hard-line Karl Kautsky against the archreformer, Edouard Bernstein, who believed socialism could be achieved through involvement in parliamentary politics and trade union activity alone, without the need for revolution. In 1905, Auguste Bebel made Rosa editor of the party's newspaper, Vorwarts (forward). But this was the same year that revolution broke out in her homeland and she quickly returned home. The revolution collapsed however, and Rosa was promptly arrested. The experience taught her a great deal, she had witnessed revolution at first hand, and it only seemed to radicalise her even further. She now believed that a general strike would be the spark that would lead to the violent overthrow of capitalism. This was too extreme a view for the majority of the SDP which had been gradually moving towards the Right, and on her return to Germany she found herself alienated from most of her party. She also supported the Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks. She had expected to be given the leading position in Poland following the Russian Revolution of 1917. But Lenin had not forgotten the sleight and she was elbowed to one side as he appointed Karl Radek, as his chief for Polish affairs. She had vehemently opposed the First World War and had joined with the French socialist Jean Jaures, in trying to get all the socialist parties in Europe to vote as a block against it. This idea collapsed when Jaures was assassinated in July. 1914, and Rosa endured the bitter experience of witnessing the SDP vote overwhelmingly for the war.
Karl Liebknecht In December, 1914, she left the SDP to form an underground political organisation - the Spartakusdund (Spartakist League) along with Jogiches, Clara Zetkin and Karl Liebknecht. They published and distributed anti-war literature. On Mayday, 1916, they demonstrated openly against the war on the streets of Berlin, and were promptly arrested. Released in the general amnesty of political prisoners that followed the abdication of the Kaiser in October, 1918, she, Jogiches, Zetkin and Liebknecht went on to form the Kommunist Partei Deutschland (KPD). Despite parliamentary elections in which the KPD participated and saw the election of the first SPD Government, a second wave of revolution swept Germany in early 1919. Cajoled into taking part, not least by its own newspaper Red Flag, the Spartakists were disorganised and ill-prepared. They tried to capture key positions in Berlin and organise a general strike, but failed. The Government responded with haste and sent units of the army and the protofascist Freikorps (paramilitary units of right-wing ex-army officers) to crush the revolt. After sporadic but bloody fighting the rebellion was quashed. The Murder In response to the uprising in Berlin, Friedrich Ebert, the SPD President of the newly formed Weimar Republic, and an ex-student of Rosa's, personally ordered in the brutal Freikorps. There was to be no oversight of their behaviour and no control over their actions. They were effectively extermination squads. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were arrested on 15 January, 1919, by a Freikorps Squad led by Captain Waldemar Pabst. He had them beaten and tortured before interrogating them. Satisfied that he had learned all he could from them he gave the order to have them killed. Rosa was struck about the head with a rifle butt before being forced to the ground and shot. Her body was then thrown into the Landwehr Canal. Karl Liebknecht was shot in a nearby park around the same time. Pabst, interviewed by the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, in 1962, claimed that he had acted upon the express orders of Friedrich Ebert and the Defence Minister Gustav Noske (another former pupil of Rosa's). As a postscript, Leo Jogiches was later murdered whilst trying to track down Rosa's killers.