Rosa Luxemburg


Rosa Luxemburg (March 5, 1870 or 1871 – January 15, 1919, in Polish Róża Luksemburg) was a Polish-born Marxist political theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary. She was a theorist of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland, later becoming involved in the German SPD, followed by the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. She started the journal Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag). After the support by the SPD for the German participation in World War I, she co-founded (with Karl Liebknecht) the Spartacist League (German: Spartakusbund), a revolutionary group that later became the Communist Party of Germany. It took part in an unsuccessful revolution in Berlin in January 1919. The uprising was accompanied by Luxemburg's propaganda, and crushed by the remnants of the monarchist army and right wing freelance militias collectively called the Freikorps. Luxemburg and hundreds of others were captured, tortured, and killed. Since their deaths, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht have attained great symbolic status amongst democratic socialists and Marxists.