Author of Capital and leader of the First International
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" — Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)
Born into a lawyer's family in Trier, he began as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung. He renounced his Prussian citizenship in 1845 and remained stateless for the rest of his life, living in London exile from 1849. Over forty years with Engels he wrote the Communist Manifesto and Capital and led the First International. The late Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) takes apart, line by line, the Lassallean thinking lodged in the German workers' party's unity programme, his last answer to the idea of the state as the instrument of socialism.
Career timeline
- 1842–1843Editor of the Rheinische Zeitung until Prussian censorship closed it
- 1844Met Engels in Paris, beginning a lifelong collaboration
- 1845Renounced Prussian citizenship; stateless thereafter
- 1848Published the Communist Manifesto; edited the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
- 1849–1883Exile in London, writing Capital in the British Museum reading room
- 1864–1872Drafted the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association and led its General Council
- 1867Published Capital, Volume I
- 1871The Civil War in France — defended the Paris Commune as a form of working-class government
- 1875Wrote the Critique of the Gotha Programme, sent to Bracke for the leadership alone
- 1883Died in London and was buried at Highgate Cemetery
Marx's co-author and patron; author of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
"The State is not 'abolished'. It dies out." — Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880)
Born to a Barmen mill-owning family, he managed the family firm in Manchester and wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). After the 1848 revolution and the Baden rising he returned to the office for twenty years to keep the Marx household in London. From Anti-Dühring (1878) he drew three chapters into the pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880), which was translated into ten languages and became the introduction to Marxism. After Marx's death he edited Capital vols. II and III, and in 1891 he published the Critique of the Gotha Programme (buried for fifteen years) over the objections of the party leadership.
Career timeline
- 1842–1844Clerked at Ermen and Engels in Manchester — the field for The Condition of the Working Class in England
- 1844Met Marx in Paris, beginning a lifelong collaboration
- 1848Co-wrote the Communist Manifesto; on the staff of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
- 1849Fought in the Baden-Palatinate campaign as an adjutant
- 1850–1870Returned to the Manchester firm and supported the Marx family for twenty years
- 1878Published Anti-Dühring, whose footnote calls Bismarckian nationalisation 'a kind of spurious Socialism'
- 1880At Lafargue's request drew out three chapters as Socialisme utopique et Socialisme scientifique
- 1883–1894Edited Capital vols. II and III from Marx's manuscripts
- 1891Published the Critique of the Gotha Programme in Die Neue Zeit, answering the party's objections in his foreword
- 1895Died in London
Founder of the ADAV, Germany's first workers' party
"Das eiserne und grausame Gesetz" — the iron and cruel law Lassalle said held wages down to bare subsistence (1863)
A lawyer and agitator from a Jewish merchant family in Breslau. In May 1863 he founded the General German Workers' Association (ADAV) at Leipzig and was elected its president for five years, arguing that universal suffrage would turn the state toward funding producers' co-operatives and so toward socialism. That same year he met Bismarck in secret to sound out an alliance between the workers and the Prussian monarchy, which drew Marx's deep suspicion. In 1864 he was shot in a duel over a marriage and died three days later outside Geneva. Eleven years afterwards his programme supplied the frame of the Gotha unity programme.
Career timeline
- 1848–1849Agitated in the Rhineland during the revolution; jailed six months for inciting armed resistance
- 1862The Workers' Programme lecture, addressing the working class as an independent political force
- 1863.05Founded the ADAV at Leipzig and became its president for a five-year term
- 1863Secret meetings and correspondence with Bismarck on a workers–monarchy alliance
- 1864.08Shot in a duel outside Geneva; died three days later
Co-founder of the Eisenach party and drafter of the Gotha Programme
"Nobody has combatted State Socialism more than we German Socialists, nobody has shown more distinctively than I, that State Socialism is really State capitalism!" — 'Our Recent Congress' (1896)
Born in Giessen, he joined the risings of 1848 and fled by way of Switzerland to London, where he spent twelve years as a close associate of Marx and Engels. In 1869 he founded the Social Democratic Workers' Party with August Bebel at Eisenach; arrested for opposing war credits, he was convicted at the Leipzig treason trial of 1872. He was the man who brought off the Gotha unity congress of 1875 and drafted its programme, the document Marx took apart line by line. From 1890 until his death he edited the party paper Vorwärts. He was the father of Karl Liebknecht.
Career timeline
- 1848–1849Fought in the Baden rising and fled to Switzerland after its defeat
- 1850–1862Exile in London, close to Marx and Engels, and a member of the Communist League
- 1869Co-founded the Social Democratic Workers' Party at Eisenach with Bebel
- 1870–1872Arrested for opposing war credits; sentenced to two years' fortress confinement at the Leipzig treason trial
- 1875Led the Gotha unity congress and drafted the programme that merged the party with the Lassalleans
- 1878–1890Held the party together as a Reichstag deputy under the Anti-Socialist Laws
- 1890–1900Editor-in-chief of the party paper Vorwärts
- 1900Died in Charlottenburg
Co-founder of the SPD who led the German workers' movement for over 40 years, the 'shadow emperor' of the working class
"The struggle in Paris is only a small outpost skirmish; the main affair in Europe is still ahead of us. Before a few decades have passed, 'War on the palaces, peace to the cottages' will become the battle cry of the entire European proletariat." — Reichstag, 25 May 1871
A woodturner's apprentice who co-founded the Social Democratic Workers' Party with Wilhelm Liebknecht in 1869 and, through the Gotha unity congress of 1875, built the SPD into the world's largest socialist party. Under the Anti-Socialist Laws (1878–1890) he ran the illegal party paper from Zurich exile and held the underground organisation together; he steered the adoption of the Erfurt Programme (1891), which became the Marxist benchmark for European social democracy, and led the orthodox defence against Eduard Bernstein's revisionism. His Woman and Socialism (1879) ran through over fifty editions as the founding text of socialist feminism, and his funeral in 1913 drew the leaders of the Second International.
Career timeline
- 1866–1867Co-founded the Saxon People's Party with Wilhelm Liebknecht; active in the Leipzig Workers' Educational Association
- 1867First elected to the Reichstag of the North German Confederation; held a seat continuously until his death
- 1869Co-founded the Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) with Liebknecht at Eisenach
- 1870–1872Opposed war credits in the Franco-Prussian War and defended the Paris Commune; convicted of high treason, served two years' fortress confinement
- 1875Led the Gotha unity congress, merging with the Lassalleans to form the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany
- 1878–1890Published Der Sozialdemokrat from Zurich exile and directed the underground party under the Anti-Socialist Laws
- 1891Steered the adoption of the Erfurt Programme, establishing the Marxist benchmark for European social democracy
- 1899–1906Defended orthodox Marxism against Bernstein's revisionism; mediated the mass strike debate between radicals and trade unions
The elder theoretician of German Marxism: historian, literary critic, and Spartacus League co-founder
Lenin characterized Mehring as 'a man not only wanting but also knowing how to be a Marxist.'
Franz Mehring was the foremost Marxist historian, literary critic, and philosopher of the German workers' movement. Joining the SPD in 1891, he became a lead writer for Die Neue Zeit and, alongside Kautsky and Luxemburg, formed the theoretical backbone of the party's Marxist left. He co-founded the Spartacus League in 1916, led the founding of the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1919, and authored the classical Marx biography Karl Marx: The Story of His Life (1918) and the landmark History of German Social Democracy (1898). His The Lessing Legend (1893), a materialist demolition of Prussian mythology, drew high praise from Engels, and he extended historical materialism into cultural criticism against the encroachments of neo-Kantianism and Nietzsche.
Career timeline
- 1846Born in Schlawe, Pomerania (Prussia)
- 1884–1890Editor, Berliner Volks-Zeitung
- 1891Joined SPD; lead writer, Die Neue Zeit (to 1913)
- 1902–1907Editor-in-chief, Leipziger Volkszeitung
- 1906–1911Lecturer, SPD central party school
- 1916Co-founder, Spartacus League
- 1917–1918Member, Prussian Landtag
- 1919Co-founder, Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
German admiral who built the High Seas Fleet to rival the Royal Navy, set off a naval arms race and urged unrestricted U-boat war
Born in Küstrin in Brandenburg, the son of a lawyer, he was State Secretary of the Imperial Naval Office from 1897 to 1916 and turned the modest Imperial Navy into a world-class force that could threaten the Royal Navy. The Fleet Acts of 1898–1912, built on his “risk theory”, gave Germany the second-largest navy in the world, but started a costly naval arms race and pushed Britain closer to France. He saw sea power as a “palliative against” the Social Democrats. When the High Seas Fleet could not break Britain’s blockade, he became an outspoken advocate of unrestricted submarine warfare, and resigned in March 1916. In 1917 he co-founded and chaired the far-right Fatherland Party, which opposed a negotiated peace, and after the war sat in the Reichstag for the German National People’s Party. He died in 1930.
Career timeline
- 1897–1916State Secretary of the Imperial Naval Office
- 1898–1912Built the High Seas Fleet through the Fleet Acts
- 1917Co-founder and chairman of the German Fatherland Party
- 1924–1928Reichstag deputy for the DNVP
Founder of Marxist revisionism and evolutionary socialism, author of The Preconditions of Socialism
"I have extraordinarily little interest in what is called the 'final goal of Socialism.' This aim, whatever it be, is nothing to me, the movement everything." — Response to critics (1899)
German SPD theorist and politician. Engels's literary executor and editor of Der Sozialdemokrat, Bernstein began as an orthodox Marxist before his 1899 The Preconditions of Socialism challenged Marx's predictions of capitalist collapse, class polarization, and revolutionary necessity. His dictum "the goal is nothing, the movement everything" laid the foundation for social democracy's reformist, parliamentary turn, creating the schism between revolutionary socialism and evolutionary social democracy. He broke with the SPD's pro-war majority to co-found the anti-war USPD during World War I, and spent his final years defending Weimar parliamentary democracy, dying six weeks before Hitler took power.
Career timeline
- 1872Joined SDAP (Eisenachers); delegate to 1875 Gotha unification congress
- 1881–1890Editor of Der Sozialdemokrat in exile (Zurich, then London); close collaborator of Engels
- 1891Co-drafted Erfurt Programme with Kautsky; named Engels's literary executor (1895)
- 1899Published The Preconditions of Socialism — launched revisionism debate that divided the international socialist movement
- 1902–1928Reichstag deputy (Breslau-West, later Potsdam II) — specialist in taxation, trade, and constitutional law
- 1915–1917Turned against war credits; issued peace manifesto with Haase and Kautsky; co-founded the anti-war USPD
- 1918–1928Assistant secretary in Weimar Treasury; defended parliamentary democracy; died 1932
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
