Rosa Luxemburg

Killed on 15 January 1919 in Berlin by Freikorps soldiers after the suppression of the Spartacist uprising, on the same night as Karl Liebknecht.

Overview

Rosa Luxemburg, born in Russian Poland, was a leading Marxist theorist and economist and a prominent opponent of World War I, which led to her imprisonment for much of the war. With Karl Liebknecht she founded the Spartacus League and, at the turn of 1918 and 1919, the Communist Party of Germany. After the failed Spartacist uprising in Berlin in January 1919, she and Liebknecht were arrested by members of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division, a Freikorps unit, and killed. Her body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal and only recovered months later. The killers received lenient treatment. She remains an influential figure on the democratic left.