Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg | |
|---|---|
 Rosa Luxemburg in 1915. | |
| Born |
Rozalia Luksenburg 5 March 1871 Zamość, Congress Poland, Russian Empire |
| Died |
15 January 1919 Berlin, Free State of Prussia, Weimar Republic |
| Cause of death | Murder |
| Nationality | Polish |
Rosa Luxemburg (5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalized-German communist revolutionary who participated in the Polish, German and international proletarian movements. She was a prominent left-wing leader of the Second International, and one of the founders of the Communist Party of Germany.
Rosa Luxemburg was born into a Jewish family in Russian-controlled Poland. She began taking part in revolutionary activities very early in life. In 1886 she joined the Polish left-wing Proletariat Party (which was founded in 1882), and soon took part in organizing a general strike. In 1889, at about the age of 18, Rosa Luxemburg fled to Switzerland to both escape political detention and to continue her education. There, financially supported by her businessman father, she attended the University of Zurich and studied history, economics, philosophy, and mathematics, while specializing in political science, and economic and financial crises. Her dissertation, “Die Industrielle Entwicklung Polens”[a] was presented in 1897 and published the next year, and she was awarded a Doctor of Law degree.
In 1898, Luxemburg moved to Germany, and soon became a leading figure in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the SPD supported the German war effort, after which Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht founded the anti-war Spartacus League. In January 1919, Luxemburg participated in the Spartacist uprising in Berlin, an attempted overthrow of the SPD-ruled Weimar Republic. On January 15, 1919, after the failure of this uprising, both Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were arrested and interrogated by the government, and then they were brutally murdered by Freikorps paramilitaries. The anniversary of her murder remains a revolutionary holiday to this day, with annual mass demonstrations to mark it.[1]
Bibliography
The following are works by Rosa Luxemburg which are available in our library.
References
- ↑ "LUXEMBURG, Rosa". Dictionary of Revolutionary Marxism.
Notes
- ↑ English: “The Industrial Development of Poland”