Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
“Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently”
On 14 January 1919, the day after the Spartacist uprising fell, Luxemburg's final article appeared in Die Rote Fahne. To the victors' cry of 'Order prevails in Berlin!' she answered: 'I was, I am, I shall be!' Arrested that night, murdered the next day.
Polish-born German revolutionary, and the Bolsheviks' sharpest comradely critic. From prison she defended the Russian Revolution while warning against the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and the suppression of the press. Murdered by Freikorps troops during the January 1919 Berlin rising.
Career timeline
- 1893Co-founds the Polish social democracy
- 1898–1914Theorist of the SPD left; the revisionism dispute
- 1899Published Reform or Revolution
- 1906The Mass Strike
- 1913Published The Accumulation of Capital
- 1915–1918Jailed for anti-war work; writes on the Russian Revolution from prison
- 1918.12Co-founds the German Communist Party
- 1919.01Murdered by Freikorps troops in the January rising