Rosa was born into middle-class Jewish family in Zamosc, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire, on 5 March, 1871, she was a shy and studious child, plain and not particularly pretty, she attracted little male attention. Undistracted then by the pursuits of love or the domestic drudgery most commonly associated with the life of a young middle-class woman at the turn of the century, she instead turned her attention to politics, and this she did with a vengeance. Indeed so involved in dissident politics did she become that it brought her to the attention of the Authorities and she was forced to flee Poland in early 1889, when still aged only 18.

Settling in Zurich, Switzerland, she studied law and political economy at the University and very soon made the acquaintance of the Russian emigre population there which included such socialist luminaries as Georgi Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod, Alexandra Kollontai and Leo Jogiches. In 1893, together with Jogiches, she formed the Social Democratic Party of Poland. Unable to establish itself in Poland where it was banned, Rosa was forced to edit and publish its journal Sprawa Bobotnicza (Workers’ Cause) from Paris and have it distributed illegally. But it made little headway.

In 1895, Rosa married a German national, Gustave Lubeck, not for any reasons of affection but merely to acquire German citizenship. Soon after she settled in Berlin where she joined the Social Democratic Party and soon became embroiled in the arguments between orthodox Marxists and social reformers that had split by far the most popular political party in the country right down the middle. She sided with the hardline Karl Kautsky to oppose the arch-reformer Edouard Bernstein, who believed that socialism could be achieved in a democratic country without the need for revolution. Whether Germany was a democracy was a moot point. But increased parliamentary engagement and trade union activity, he believed, would on its own be enough. Rosa, did not agree.

In 1905, Auguste Bebel, appointed Rosa editor of the party’s newspaper, Vorwarts (forward) but this coincided with the same year that revolution broke out in her homeland and she quickly resigned her post and returned to Poland. Not long after her arrival, however, the revolution collapsed and she was promptly arrested. Not particularly wanting Rosa on their hands the Polish Authorities deported her back to Germany. The experience, however, had radicalised her even further. She now believed that a general strike could be the spark would be the spark that would lead to the violent overthrow of capitalism. This was too extreme a view for the majority of the SDP which had been gradually moving towards the Right. Her more extreme views soon saw her alienated from most of the party. Her more radical politics led her to make the acquaintance of Vladimir Lenin. He was impressed with this short, slight, intellectually rigorous Polish firebrand, but her support for the Mensheviks in their dispute over tactics and strategy with Lenin’s Bolshevik faction made Lenin deeply suspicious of her. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, she had been expecting to be given the leading role in Poland. But Lenin had not forgotten the sleight of earlier years and she was elbowed aside in favour of Karl Radek.  

As a pacifist she vehemently opposed the First World War and had joined forces with the French Socialist leader Jean Jaures, in trying to get an agreement between all the Socialist Parties of Europe to form a united front to oppose it. The attempt collapsed when Jaures was assassinated in Paris on 14 July, 1914, and it is easy to imagine Rosa’s despair as she had to endure the bitter experience of the SDP voting overwhelmingly in favour of a war budget. Disgusted, she resigned from the SDP in December, 1914, to form her own undergroud political organisation, the Spartakusbund (Spartakist League)  along with Leo Jogiches, Clara Zlatkin and Karl Liebknecht. They busied themselves in opposing the war as best they could publishing and distributing, often by hand, anti-war literature. On May Day, 1916, they openly demonstrated against the war on the streets of Berlin, and were promptly arrested.

Incarcerated for duration of the war, Rosa and her comrades were released in the general political amnesty that followed the abdication of the Kaiser in October, 1918. Inspired by events in Russia she and the others swiftly formed the Kommunist Partei Deutschland in preparation to fight the coming parliamentary elections of November, 1918. The elections were being held in an attempt to stem the tide of revolution and resulted in the formation of the first SDP Government. The KPD had fared fairly well in the election picking up about 10% of the vote, and it could not be disputed that Germany had voted for the left. But the SDP was no longer a revolutionary party and disillusionment soon began to overwhelm the more radical who wished to see the establishment of a Soviet style Government established based on the Russian model. In early 1919, a second wave of Revolution swept Germany. The radical left were demanding that the Spartakists participate and take the lead. Rosa and Karl Liebknecht were opposed to it. They were fully aware that the workers were ill-prepared, poorly armed, and disorganised. But they were coming under increasing pressure to do so, but bullied and cajoled by among others, militant trade unionists in Berlin, Lenin (who insisted upon the spread of (World Revolution) and even their own newspaper the Red Flag, they yielded. In early January, 1919, they tried to capture key positions in Berlin by force but were thwarted. They tried to organise a general strike but failed. In the meantime, the Government had responded to the threat by despatching the Freikorps ( proto-fascist paramilitary units made up of ex-army officers and volunteers) along with reliable regular troops onto the streets of Berlin. After a week of sporadic but bloody fighting the revolution was brutally crushed.

The Freikorps were now given a free hand to restore order in Berlin. The SDP President of the newly-formed Weimar Republic Friedrich Ebert, aware of the precariousness of his own position was willing to turn a blind eye to their actions. With no oversight as to their behaviour the Freikorps roamed the streets of Berlin as murder squads.

Karl Liebknecht

On 15 January, Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht were captured by a Freikorps squad led by Captain Waldemar Pabst. He hated the Left who he blamed for Germany’s defeat in the war and would certainly have had no sympathy for communists and pacifists. Rosa and Karl were treated roughly at the time of their capture and were later beaten and tortured before being interrogated. Believing that he had extracted all the information he could from them he simply gave the order for them to be killed. Rosa was struck around the head with a rifle butt before being forced to the ground and shot. Her bullet riddled body was then thrown into the Landwehr Canal. Karl Liebknecht’s body was found shot-through in a nearby park.

Interviewed in 1962, by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, he claimed that he had executed the two revolutionaries on the express orders of both Ebert and the Defence Minister Gustave Noske, a former pupil of Rosa’s. Whether this is true or not is dependant upon the word of one man. Both Rosa and Karl were reluctant revolutionaries in that bleak winter of 1919. They did, however, die as martyrs to the cause. It only adds to the poignancy of their fate if the orders for their deaths had been issued by those they would previously have considered as colleagues and friends. But htey were not the last victims of the failed Spartakist Revolt. Leo Jogiches was later murdered whilst trying to track down Rosa’s killers.