Germany’s: Sharply divided left-wing parties, deep in a period of historic weakness, on Sunday commemorated the larger-than-life revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg on the 100th anniversary of her murder. Organisers said thousands turned out in memory of “Red Rosa” and prominent fellow leftist Karl Liebknecht at the Socialist Memorial in Berlin, built by the communist government of the former East Germany. “The fact that Rosa Luxe­mburg was killed so early” — before Sta­l­i­nism tainted the communist dre­am for good for many in western Europe — “made her an icon whose aura and influence remain intact”, said Free University of Berlin political scientist Stefan Heinz. But the centenary of her death comes as German left parties face hard times. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Left (Die Linke) — together boast less than 25 per cent support in the polls after years of crisis. The malaise is shared by their counterparts around Europe and elsewhere in the world, as many working-class people are increasingly attracted by nationalist or populist movements instead.

A journalist and talented public speaker, Luxemburg was born in Lublin, in Russian-controlled Poland, to a family of liberal Jewish traders. Admired by Lenin, she was a tireless interpreter of Marx. She travelled around Germany stirring up crowds, often perching precariously on a stool to speak. For his part, Liebknecht was a social-democratic member of parliament who went down in history for declaring a “socialist republic” the day of the Kaiser’s abdication. Together, the two leftists created the Spartacist league, referring to gladiator slave Spartacus who led an uprising against Rome. Two weeks before the pair were murdered they founded the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The double killing on Jan 15, 1919, was the apogee of a “bloody week” in the uprising of tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors and workers around Germany’s World War I defeat in November 1918.

Published in Dawn, January 14th, 2019