Yet another woman in history.

Rosa Luxemburg was born Rosalia Luxemburg on March 5, 1870 or 1871. She was the fifth child of the Jewish wood trader/timber trader Eliasz Luxemburg III and his wife Line (maiden name: Löwenstein). Rosa had a growth defect and was physically handicapped all her life.

After her family moved to Warsaw, Rosa attended a girl’s school there from 1880. Even in those early days she was a member of the Proletariat, a left-wing Polish party, from 1886. The Proletariat had been founded in 1882, twenty years before the Russian workers’ parties, and started off by organizing a general strike. As a result, four of its leaders were put to death and the party was broken up. Some of its members managed to meet in secret; Rosa joined one of these groups.

In 1887 Rosa passed her Abitur with flying colors then fled to Switzerland in 1889 after threats of imprisonment for her political associations. There she attended Zurich University, along with other socialist figures such as Anatoli Lunacharsky and Leo Jogiches. She studied philosophy, history, politics, economics and mathematics simultaneously. Her specialized subjects were Staatswissenschaft (the science of forms of state), the Middle Ages and economic and stock exchange crises. In 1898 she completed her doctorate with a dissertation entitled The Industrial Development of Poland. Between the years 1892 and 1919 Luxemburg produced almost 700 articles, pamphlets, speeches, and books.

While in Zurich, she met many exiled revolutionaries from Russia including Gregory Plekhanov. Luxemburg and the exiles from Russia fell out over what they believed should happen to Poland – should Poland receive self-determination or not? Luxemburg was against self-determination as she believed that a newly created state was weak and at a disadvantage to the people there as the bourgeoisie would use this national weakness to their advantage to strengthen their hold over the workers. Her view was opposed by many and as a result Luxemburg formed the Polish Social Democratic Party.

In 1898, Luxemburg left Zurich for Berlin where she joined the German Social Democratic Labour Party. Luxemburg was very keen on supporting the idea of debate and in 1900 she produced Reform or Revolution. She supported reform as a way of improving life but she did not want to stop at reforms that came from the government as she believed that governments frequently gave only what they wanted to. Luxemburg wanted a complete revolution of governmental systems.

She saw the revolution in Russia in 1905 as a very good sign of hope. She moved to Warsaw where she hoped to make more of a mark in Russia. However, she was caught by the authorities and put in prison.

When the war broke out in 1914, she was very much against it. Luxemburg was very angered by the Social Democratic Party that had fully supported Germany’s entry into the war. Luxemburg left the SDP. It was at this time that she allied with Karl Liebknecht who shared the same views and had also left the SDP. They formed the Internationale Group that was to become the Spartacists. Their main party platform during the war was for German soldiers to turn their weapons against their officers and then against the government thus overthrowing it.

Both Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested for their political activities. While in prison, Luxemburg wrote the Junius Pamphlet which was to become the foundation of the Spartacists beliefs.

In November 1918, Luxemburg was released from prison. Prince Max von Baden had introduced a general amnesty for all political prisoners though there was reluctance to let Luxemburg have her freedom. On her release, she immediately started her revolutionary activities again. In December she co-founded the German Communist Party which was essentially made up of Spartacists. At this time the so-called German Revolution was taking place and Berlin was a very dangerous place to be. The head of the government, Friedrich Ebert, had moved the government to the safety of Weimar and the right-wing Freikorps was left to deal with the communists.

On January 15th, 1919, Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck, another Spartacist leader, were arrested. What happened next is unclear but Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Pieck were taken from the Adlon Hotel in Berlin, where they were being held, to be local prison. Pieck managed to escape. After hours of torture Luxemburg was battered to death with rifle butts and thrown into a nearby river. Liebknecht was shot in the back of the head then deposited as an unknown body in a nearby mortuary.

An intriguing film was made about her life in 1986 by German feminist filmmaker, Margarethe von Trotta.