Creator of International Women's Day, she set women's liberation at the heart of class struggle
Six months before Hitler took power, she opened the Reichstag as its oldest member with a call for a united front against Nazism (1932)
Founder of Marxist feminism, she saw women's liberation as inseparable from class struggle and proposed International Women's Day in 1910. From anti-war resistance to co-founding the KPD, she opened the Reichstag at seventy-five with a call for a united front against Nazism.
Career timeline
- 1878–1917Leads the SPD women's movement; edits Die Gleichheit (1892–1917)
- 1910Proposes International Women's Day at Copenhagen
- 1915–1919Anti-war work; in at the founding of the Spartacus League and the KPD
- 1920–1933Reichstag deputy; Comintern executive
- 1925Published the memoir Lenin on the Women’s Question
- 1932Opens the Reichstag as its oldest member, calling for a united front against Nazism
- 1933Exile to the USSR; dies in June, buried in the Kremlin Wall
German trade-union leader who signed the 1918 agreement with Stinnes and met the Kapp Putsch of 1920 with a general strike
Born in Marienburg, he grew up in an orphanage and became a wood turner. He joined the Social Democrats in 1885, chaired the General Commission of the German Trade Unions from 1890, and sat in the Reichstag in 1893–1898 and 1903–1920. In 1913 he became the first President of the International Federation of Trade Unions. He led the SPD’s right wing, and in the First World War supported the civil truce and the renunciation of strikes. On 15 November 1918 he signed an agreement with Hugo Stinnes under which employers for the first time accepted the unions as workers’ representatives, with the eight-hour day and works councils, while the unions rejected the radical socialists’ demands. In 1919 he became chairman of the new General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB), and in March 1920 he organised the general strike against the Kapp Putsch. He died in Berlin later that year.
Career timeline
- 1885Joined the SPD
- 1890Chairman of the General Commission of the German Trade Unions
- 1893Elected to the Reichstag
- 1913First President of the International Federation of Trade Unions
- 1918.11.15Stinnes–Legien Agreement
- 1919Chairman of the ADGB
- 1920.03General strike against the Kapp Putsch
German Social Democratic and Independent Social Democratic politician who headed Berlin police in 1918
“I got my job from the Revolution, and I shall give it up only to the Revolution.”
A trained mechanic, Eichhorn worked for the Social Democratic Party before joining the Independent Social Democratic Party in 1917. After the November Revolution of 1918, he became Berlin police president and pursued a policing policy favorable to left-wing political groups. On 4 January 1919, the Prussian cabinet tried to dismiss him and replace him with Social Democrat Eugen Ernst. Mass demonstrations and a general strike opposed the move, followed by occupations and armed clashes that became the January uprising.
Career timeline
- 1893Became a full-time Social Democratic Party official and worked as an editor in Dresden
- 1903–1911Member of the Reichstag for Baden's 9th constituency
- 1908–1917Head of the Berlin Social Democratic press office
- 1917Joined the Independent Social Democratic Party
- 1918–1919Served as Berlin police president
- 1919–1920Member of the Weimar National Assembly for Berlin
- 1920–1925Joined the Communist Party of Germany and served in the Reichstag
Journalist who overthrew the Bavarian monarchy in Munich in November 1918, proclaimed the People’s State and was assassinated the next year
He organized the November 1918 Bavarian Revolution, overthrew the monarchy and proclaimed the People’s State; he was assassinated in February 1919 while on his way to resign.
Born to a Jewish merchant family in Berlin, he was a theatre critic and editor of the SPD’s Vorwärts before moving to Munich. He joined the USPD against the war and was jailed for leading the munitions strike of January 1918. On 7 November he led demonstrators from a rally on the Theresienwiese round the barracks, and the next day proclaimed the People’s State of Bavaria and became premier. His publication of documents on German war guilt earned him the right’s hatred. Heavily defeated in the January 1919 election, he was assassinated by Count Arco-Valley on 21 February on his way to resign.
Career timeline
- 1890–1895Contributing editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung.
- 1898Joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
- 1900–1905Edited Vorwärts.
- 1907–1910Chief editor of the Fränkische Tagespost in Nuremberg.
- 1917Joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD).
- 1918Convicted of treason for inciting a munitions workers’ strike, he was imprisoned at Stadelheim and released in October under a general amnesty.
- 1918–1919Served as the first republican premier of the People’s State of Bavaria.
German anarchist thinker who served in Bavaria’s revolutionary government and was killed by counterrevolutionary troops in 1919.
The state is a social relationship. Create new communities, and it can be replaced by a different social relationship.
Landauer argued that the state was not merely an apparatus to overthrow but a social relationship that could be replaced by creating voluntary communities. In 1908 he founded the Socialist Bund to pursue socialism through cooperatives and communal association. He opposed the First World War and came to Munich at Kurt Eisner’s request in 1918 to support the revolution. In April 1919 he joined the Bavarian Soviet Republic as Commissioner for Enlightenment and Public Instruction. After government forces crushed the republic, he was arrested and killed at Stadelheim Prison on 2 May.
Career timeline
- 1908Founded the Socialist Bund
- 1918Came to Munich at Kurt Eisner’s request to support the revolutionary government
- 1919Commissioner for Enlightenment and Public Instruction in the Bavarian Soviet Republic
Social Democratic chancellor whose government accepted the Treaty of Versailles under an Allied ultimatum
Born in Darkehmen in the Province of Prussia, he worked as a lawyer’s clerk, co-founded the office employees’ union and was second chairman of the General Commission of Trade Unions from 1908 to 1918. Elected to the Reichstag for the SPD in 1912, he became labour secretary in Max von Baden’s cabinet in October 1918. When Scheidemann resigned in protest at the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, Bauer, until then a vocal critic of the treaty, succeeded him and got it through the National Assembly. His government carried out tax reform and extended social insurance, but was forced out in March 1920 over the negotiations conducted with the Kapp putschists. He was later vice-chancellor and treasury minister, and the Barmat corruption scandal cost him his seat in 1925. He died in Berlin in 1944.
Career timeline
- 1908–1918Second chairman of the General Commission of Trade Unions
- 1912Reichstag deputy (SPD)
- 1918Labour secretary
- 1919–1920Chancellor of Germany
- 1921–1922Vice-chancellor and treasury minister
“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
Lathe operator who led Berlin’s Revolutionary Stewards, chaired the council Executive in 1918 and later wrote the revolution’s history
During the November Revolution of 1918, he chaired the Executive Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils. He led the Revolutionary Stewards in organising political strikes against the war from 1916.
A lathe operator from rural Thuringia, he became a leader of the turners’ branch of the Berlin metalworkers’ union. In the war he led the Revolutionary Stewards, a clandestine network of factory delegates, organising the 1916 strike against Liebknecht’s arrest and the mass strikes of April 1917 and January 1918. On the night of 9 November 1918 he occupied the Reichstag and called council elections, and as chairman of the Executive Council of the Greater Berlin workers’ and soldiers’ councils was formal head of the council regime. He later joined and left the KPD, and published a three-volume history of the revolution in 1924–1925.
Career timeline
- 1916Began organising political strikes against the First World War with the Revolutionary Stewards.
- 1918Chaired the Executive Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils during the German Revolution.
German Communist who abstained on the Comintern’s founding at its first congress and was later shot in the Great Purge
At the 1919 Comintern founding congress, Eberlein conveyed Luxemburg and Jogiches’s mandate against immediate foundation. Lenin persuaded him personally, but he followed the mandate and abstained rather than vote against.
A draughtsman from Saalfeld, he joined the SPD and during the war co-founded the Spartacus League with Luxemburg. As the KPD’s delegate to the Comintern’s founding congress in March 1919 he abstained on the founding vote, as Luxemburg and Jogiches had advised, believing a premature International would be dominated by the Bolsheviks. Afterwards he did organisational and financial work for the Comintern and the German party and sat in the Prussian Landtag. He fled to the Soviet Union in 1933, was arrested in 1937 and was shot in Moscow in October 1941.
Career timeline
- 1916Helped organize the Spartacus League as an underground political organization.
- 1918Helped found the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
- 1919Attended the Comintern’s founding congress as the KPD delegate and abstained on its founding vote.
- 1921Elected to the Prussian Landtag.
- 1937Arrested and imprisoned in the Soviet Union.
- 1941Shot in Moscow.
Christian Democrat who led the CDU in the Soviet zone until SMAD removed him, then became West Germany’s minister for all-German affairs
A bookbinder from Hammelburg in Bavaria, he became a leader of the Catholic trade-union movement and was elected to the Reichstag for the Centre Party in 1933. He joined the resistance against the Nazis, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938, and went into hiding after the 20 July 1944 plot. After the war he co-founded the CDU in the Soviet zone and became its co-chairman with Ernst Lemmer; as a Christian Socialist he called for the nationalisation of key industries. Critical of the Communists, he and Lemmer were removed as chairmen by the Soviet Military Administration in December 1947, and he moved to West Berlin. He opposed Adenauer’s Western integration in favour of a neutral, united Germany, and was minister for all-German affairs from 1949 to 1957. He died in Berlin in 1961.
Career timeline
- 1933Reichstag deputy for the Centre Party
- 1938Arrested by the Gestapo
- 1945–1947Co-chairman of the CDU in the Soviet zone
- 1947Removed by the Soviet Military Administration
- 1949–1957Federal Minister of All-German Affairs
SPD organiser in the Soviet zone who signed the merger with the KPD, then left the SED in 1948 and fled west
The son of a shipyard worker in Elbing, he joined the SPD in 1913 and became a white-collar union official in Brunswick, where he worked closely with Otto Grotewohl. Under the Nazis he belonged to a Social Democratic resistance circle and was imprisoned with Grotewohl in 1938. In May 1945 he and Grotewohl rebuilt the SPD in Berlin; he sat on its Central Committee and was the first SPD signatory of the agreement with the KPD and of the unity declaration. Elected to the SED Central Secretariat in 1946, he was isolated as the party was Stalinised and in September 1948 was relieved of all functions. In October he wrote a letter of resignation warning that the “party of a new type” would lead to a totalitarian dictatorship, and fled to the West. He died in 1964.
Career timeline
- 1913Joined the SPD
- 1938Imprisoned with Grotewohl
- 1945Member of the SPD Central Committee
- 1946Member of the SED Central Secretariat
- 1948Relieved of all functions, left the SED and fled west
Exiled SPD functionary who succeeded Schumacher as SPD leader and leader of the West German opposition
Born in Magdeburg, the son of a bricklayer, he joined the SPD in 1918 and led the Socialist Workers’ Youth. In May 1933 he went into exile in Prague with the party executive, helped form the exiled SPD (Sopade), and by way of Paris and Lisbon spent the war in London. Returning in February 1946, he worked in Kurt Schumacher’s office in Hanover and that year became his deputy, running the party organisation and its international contacts. After Schumacher’s death in 1952 he became party chairman, parliamentary leader and leader of the opposition. He lost to Adenauer as candidate for chancellor in 1953 and 1957, and backed the 1959 Godesberg Programme, with which the SPD broke with Marxism. He died in Bonn in 1963.
Career timeline
- 1918Joined the SPD
- 1928Chairman of the Socialist Workers’ Youth
- 1933Exile in Prague; member of the exiled SPD executive
- 1946SPD deputy chairman
- 1952–1963SPD chairman and leader of the opposition
SS diplomat who, as Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary in 1944, pressed the Hungarian government to deport its Jews to Auschwitz
Born in Bad Kissingen, the son of a schoolteacher, he studied political science in Munich and took his doctorate in 1928. He joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and took part in forcing the resignation of Austria’s Chancellor Schuschnigg, the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939 and the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia in 1941. Promoted to SS-Brigadeführer, he became Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary when Germany occupied it in March 1944, with authority over all occupying forces except the Wehrmacht, chiefly the Gestapo, and pressed the Hungarian government to deport its Jews to Auschwitz. In June he cabled Ribbentrop that some 340,000 Jews had been delivered to the Reich, and in October he helped the Arrow Cross take power. Sentenced to 20 years at the Ministries Trial in 1949, he was released in 1951 and died in Darmstadt in 1977.
Career timeline
- 1928Doctorate in political science, Munich
- 1932Joined the Nazi Party
- 1939Worked on dismembering Czechoslovakia
- 1941Arranged the proclamation of the Independent State of Croatia in Zagreb
- 1944Reich plenipotentiary in Hungary
- 1949–1951Sentenced to 20 years at the Ministries Trial; released 1951
