Rosa Luxemburg

Rosa Luxemburg was a Polish and naturalized-German revolutionary socialist, orthodox Marxist, and anti-War activist during the First World War. She was a key figure of the revolutionary socialist movements in Poland and Germany during the late 19th and early 20th century.

Rosa Luxemburg was born and raised in a secular Jewish family in Congress Poland. She became a German citizen in 1897 and was awarded a Doctor of Law in political economy from the University of Zurich, becoming one of the first women in Europe to do so.

Rosa Luxemburg was a member of various revolutionary socialist parties, including the Proletariat party, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), the Spartacus League (Spartakusbund), and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

After the SPD supported German involvement in World War I in 1915, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League, which eventually became the KPD. During the November Revolution, Luxemburg co-founded the newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement.

During the Spartacist uprising of January 1919, Freikorps troops captured, tortured, and executed Luxemburg and Liebknecht, who were considered communist martyrs by the East German government.

Despite her Polish nationality and strong ties to Polish culture, opposition from the Polish Socialist Party due to her stance against the 1918 independence of the Second Polish Republic and later criticism from Stalinists have made her a controversial historical figure in the present-day political discourse of the Third Polish Republic.

Due to her pointed criticism of both the Leninist and the more moderate social democratic schools of Marxism, Luxemburg has always had a somewhat ambivalent reception among scholars and theorists of the political left.