Rosa Luxemburg, 1871-1919

Rosa Luxemburg WWP

Luxemburg in 1905. Photo credit - Wikipedia

A Polish-born German revolutionary socialist, anti-war activist, and Marxist philosopher.



Rozalia Luksenburg was born to a Jewish family in Zamość, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire, and grew up in Warsaw. Her parents supported the Jewish Reform and Polish national movements, raising her as Pole first and a Jew second.

From 1884 to 1887, Luxemburg attended the all-girls gymnasium, a Russian school, where she was among the few Polish students who got accepted and one of the only Jewish children. There, she participated in secret study circles that studied Polish writers and poets and became a member of an illegal Polish left-wing Proletariat Party. As a result of her continued involvement in the proletariat after graduation, she became wanted by the tsarist police and lowered her profile.

In 1889, at 18, she fled to Switzerland and studied politics, economics, history, philosophy, and mathematics at the University of Zurich. In 1897, Luxemburg became one of the first women in the world to receive a Ph.D.

While in Zurich, she continued her social activism and befriended many leading figures of the Russian social democratic movement. With her fellow activist and long-time friend, Leo Jogiches, Luxemburg founded the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) party, which later merged into the Communist Workers Party of Poland. Luxemburg and her party opposed the Polish Socialist Party, which supported Polish independence, arguing that nationalism is a concession to the bourgeoisie, and advocated for socialist internationalism.

By 1898, Luxemburg moved to Germany and married a family friend’s son to receive German citizenship. She settled in Berlin and became a leading member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The following year, Luxemburg published the brochure Social Reform or Revolution? in which she attacked Eduard Bernstein’s revisionism theory, defending Marxist orthodoxy and the need for revolution to achieve international socialism.

Luxemburg returned to Warsaw after the Russian Revolution of 1905 to join the fight against the Tsar. She wrote for the SDKPiL’s illegal newspaper Czerwony Sztandar (The Red Banner). Within two years, she published over 100 articles, speeches, and brochures supporting the revolution and advocating for mass strikes, stating that this was the most essential and powerful tool for the proletariat to achieve socialist victory. Her actions led to her arrest by the tsarist authorities on March 4th, 1906. After three months, Luxemburg was released and went back to Berlin. There, she taught at the Social Democratic Party school and continued to promote her socialist agenda. In 1913 she published Die Akkumulation des Kapitals (The Accumulation of Capital), claiming that imperialism results from capitalism’s expansion into underdeveloped regions.

In 1914, Luxemburg co-founded with Karl Liebknecht the Spartakusbund (Spartacus League), a movement dedicated to ending WWI through revolution and forming a proletarian government. She also established the league’s newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag). Through the Spartacus League, Luxemburg aimed to lead Germany’s proletariat into an anti-war general strike. She got arrested again, this time for two-and-a-half years, during which she continued writing articles smuggled out of prison and published by her fellow activists.

After her release in November 1918, Luxemburg immediately returned to work on promoting the revolution and co-founded the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) on January 1st, 1919. Four days later, a second revolutionary wave broke in Berlin, and Luxemburg, through the Red Flag, encouraged the rebels to occupy all positions of power, for which she received the vilified nickname of “Bloody Rosa.”

On January 15th, 1919, German Cavalry Guards abducted Luxemburg and Liebknecht and questioned them under torture before killing them and throwing the bodies into the Landwehr Canal. Their assassination inspired a new wave of violence across Germany, and the authorities killed thousands of revolutionaries and civilians.

Four months later, Luxemburg and Liebknecht’s bodies were found and brought to burial at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin.

Rosa Luxemburg – The Eternal Rose

Ein animierter Kurzfilm des renommierten jungen Künstlers Viet Su Kieu Hung in Zusammenarbeit mit der Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Südostasien über das Leben Rosa Luxemburgs. Voller Hingabe rekonstruiert der Film Rosa Luxemburgs Leben, um ihr unvergleichliches Erbe aufzuzeigen. Über einen imaginären Brief, den Rosa in den letzten Augenblicken ihres außergewöhnlichen Lebens hätte schreiben können, lernen wir ihre Herausforderungen und Motivationen kennen.

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“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

Fun Facts

  • As a child, she suffered from a hip problem that left her with a permanent limp.
  • She and her husband, whom she married to receive German citizenship, never lived together and got divorced after five years.
  • She often published her writings under the pseudonym Junius, referring to Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Roman Republic.
  • She chose the name the Spartacus League after Spartacus, the slave-liberating Thracian gladiator who fought the Romans.
  • In 1919, the German poet Bertolt Brecht wrote the memorial Epitaph in her honor:
    "Red Rosa now has vanished too,
    And where she lies is hidden from view.
    She told the poor what life's about,
    And so the rich have rubbed her out.
    May she rest in peace."
  • To commemorate her and Liebknecht, the Liebknecht-Luxemburg Demonstration is held annually in Berlin around the date of her death.
  • A collection of her correspondence was published in the book The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg.
  • Many places and establishments are named in her honor, including a manufacturing facility of electric lamps in Warsaw, the Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin, and a street and streetcar stop in Dresden.
  • Several statues, plaques, and monuments commemorate her worldwide, including terraced gardens in Barcelona, Spain, the Lady Rosa monument in Luxemburg, the Rosa Luxemburg Memorial in Berlin, the Rosa Luxemburg Memorial in Zwickau, and the Rosa Luxemburg Denkmal in Erfurt, Germany.
  • Her life was portrayed in many artworks, including poems, novels, and films, such as the historical fiction Europe Central, the Southern Victory series, and the graphic novel Red Rosa.
  • The feminist magazine Lux is named after her.

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Rosa Luxemburg – The Eternal Rose

Ein animierter Kurzfilm des renommierten jungen Künstlers Viet Su Kieu Hung in Zusammenarbeit mit der Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Südostasien über das Leben Rosa Luxemburgs. Voller Hingabe rekonstruiert der Film Rosa Luxemburgs Leben, um ihr unvergleichliches Erbe aufzuzeigen. Über einen imaginären Brief, den Rosa in den letzten Augenblicken ihres außergewöhnlichen Lebens hätte schreiben können, lernen wir ihre Herausforderungen und Motivationen kennen.
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bell hooks WWP
Academy & Education

bell hooks, 1952-2021

Scholar, author, poet, feminist theorist, and cultural critic.

Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, one of six children of working-class parents. She discovered her love for books from an early age and performed poetry readings in front of her church community. Educated in the segregated public school system, she was very aware of racism, and being taught by mostly black women shaped her perspective as a girl of color. After high school, she studied English at Stanford University and continued postgraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Later she completed her doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1976, at the age of 24, she began her long-life academic career. First, she taught English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California, then African and Afro-American Studies at Yale, Women’s Studies at Oberlin College, and English at the City College of New York. In 1978, at 26, she published her first poetry collection titled “And There We Wept” under the name “bell hooks.” The pen name she chose is a tribute to her great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. She persisted in righting the name in lowercase letters to focus the attention on her work and ideas rather than her name and personality. In 1981, she published her first book, which she had worked on since she was 19, “Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism.” In the book titled after Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, hooks explored the civil rights movement and feminist movements throughout the decades and examined how hundreds of years of racism and sexism affect Black women today. The book was recognized for its contribution to feminist thought and was named “One of the twenty most influential women’s books in the last 20 years.” Three years later, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center was published, in which hooks accused second-wave feminism of racism and argued that the privileged white women’s experiences overshadowed the opportunity for multiracial feminist solidarity. During the 1980s, hooks organized a support group for Black women named the Sisters of the Yam. The group and its name were the inspiration for her 1993 book Sisters of the Yam: Black women and self-recovery, in which she celebrated Black sisterhood. The importance of sisterhood and the call to come together from an empowering point, rather than from a victim position, became a key notion in feminist thinking. After years of exploring and highlighting various aspects of racism in feminist theories, hooks developed a more active approach to solving the problem, as can be seen in her 1995 book Killing Rage: Ending Racism, in which she suggests that rage is a source of love and strength that can lead to positive change. In 2004, at 52, hooks returned to Kentucky to serve as Distinguished Professor in Residence in Appalachian Studies at Berea College. There, she established the bell hooks Institute in 2014 and the bell hooks Center in 2021. Over the years, hooks published more than 40 books, poem collections, scholarly articles, and five children’s books. In her work, she addressed racism, sexism, patriarchy, sexuality, and geographic influences. In her innovative approach, hooks changed common perceptions of the subjects she explored and redefined feminist theories and Women’s Studies. She died of kidney failure at the age of 69. Share: Read more...
Elizabeth-Cady-Stanton-WWP
Activism & Feminism

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902

A pioneer leading philosopher and activist of Women's Suffrage Movement in the USA, and women’s rights.

While raising seven children, Elizabeth Cady Stanton became a leader of the Suffrage Movement, serving as the theorist of women’s rights in the late 19th century. She described herself as a “caged lioness”, but refused to believe that women had to choose between motherhood and public activism. Stanton had a good start in life, born to a well-to-do family, enjoying the privilege of access to formal education in the days when girls were largely excluded from the lecture halls. She married abolitionist Henry Stanton, ten years her senior, and traveled with him to London for the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. When women were not allowed to take seats, she was inspired to work for women’s rights. There she also met Lucretia Mott; later they fought together for women’s rights.   Eight years later, in 1848, she co-hosted the first Woman’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York. Stanton wrote and presented there the Declaration of Sentiments, which was an inclusive take on the Declaration of Independence. After meeting Susan B. Anthony, the two became close friends and partners in the movement: Anthony was the strategist, and Cady Stanton was the thinker and writer. She co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and edited its journal ‘The Revolution’, addressing a wide range of women’s issues in her lectures and articles, including divorce law and married women’s property rights. Her later years were focused on writing – publishing History of Woman Suffrage and the controversial Woman’s Bible, which questioned the place of women within religion. Stanton died 18 years before women gained the right to vote in the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the American Constitution in 1920. Her daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch did practice her right to vote and continued her mother’s legacy as a feminist activist. Share: Read more...
Hannah Arendt WWP
Academy & Education

Hannah Arendt, 1906-1975

A political theorist and philosopher, one of the leading political thinkers of the 20th century. Known for her critical writing on Jewish affairs and her contribution to modern radicalism theories.

Born Johanna Arendt to a Jewish family in Hanover, Prussia (today Germany) and was raised in Königsberg. Though her family was secular, she received religious guidance and attended a Reform synagogue. Growing up, she independently learned philosophy and ancient Greek and read all Goethe scriptures. At 15, after leading a boycott on a teacher, she got expelled from school and moved by herself to Berlin, where she took audited courses at the University of Berlin. At 18, she began her formal higher education at The University of Marburg, studying German literature, theology, and philosophy. She developed a romantic relationship with her 35 years old professor, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, with whom she was involved for the rest of her life, even though he supported the Nazi Party. In 1925, when she was only 19 years old, Arendt wrote The Shadows, her first autobiographical piece, in which she explored her insecurities regarding her Jewishness and femininity. In the following year, she transferred to the University of Heidelberg, completing her thesis on the concept of love in the writings of Saint Augustine in 1929. In that same year, she began a relationship with philosopher Günther Stern, and the couple married within a few months. They moved from one place to another, trying to find Stern an academic position while writing and publishing together numerous articles. In 1931, after returning to Berlin, Arendt began working as a newspaper writer while researching the writer and socialite Rahel Varnhagen. She became more involved in politics, studying political theories, especially intrigued by Jewish politics, which inspired her to write The Enlightenment and the Jewish Question. Following Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, Arendt, as a Jew, suffered discrimination and was prevented from making a living. Her husband was prosecuted for being a Communist, fled to France. She stayed in Berlin and became an activist. After she got arrested for researching and gathering evidence of anti-Semitic propaganda at the Prussian State Library, she also left the county, first to Switzerland and then to reunite with her husband in Paris. She decided to commit herself to “the Jewish cause” and worked for several Jewish refugee organizations. In 1936, at the age of 30, Arendt and her husband divorced, and soon after, she met and married poet Heinrich Blücher. In 1940, they escaped Nazi-occupied France and immigrated to the US. Settling in NYC, Arendt began publishing a weekly column at a Jewish-German newspaper, in which she wrote about refugees, anti-Semitism, and different aspects of Zionism. After the war, she worked as an editor at Schocken Books and as a research director of the Conference on Jewish Relations. In 1951, at 45, Arendt published her first significant work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, in which she argued that Fascism and Communism share historical and intellectual origins. In her next book, The Human Condition, she examined the vita active (active life), defending the classical social ideals of work, citizenship, and political involvement, and opposing the obsession with basic welfare. In 1963, Arendt published her most recognized, controversial, and criticized work – Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, based on a series of essays that she wrote when covering the trial of the Nazi, Adolf Eichmann in Israel in 1961. In the book, Arendt argued that Eichmann, who was responsible for the transportation of many Jews to concentration camps during the holocaust, is not a monster nor a sadist, but an ambitious bureaucrat that his actions derived from his devotion and dedication to the Nazi movement. He was, in her words, “terrifyingly normal.” She was grappling with the question, ‘Can one do evil without being evil?’ Her critics did not accept her thesis that one could have a key role in the Nazi genocide yet have no evil motives. In all of her writings, Arendt challenged traditional conceptions, provoking new ways of thinking, even if debatable. She wrote not as a historian or philosopher but as a theorist that relied on facts to examine human political tendencies when given freedom and power. During the 1960s and the 1970s, Arendt held teaching positions in various institutes, including the University of Chicago, the New School for Social Research, the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton. Throughout her life, she published more than 20 books and hundreds of articles and essays. She died of a heart attack in 1975, at the age of 69. Share: Read more...
Judith-Butler-WWP
Academy & Education

Judith Butler, 1956

An American philosopher who has made a significant contribution to Queer Theory, Gender and Sexuality Theory, and Feminism.

Judith Butler grew up in a Jewish family in Cleveland Ohio. At the age of 13, when she was asked what would be her dream job, she gave two options: a philosopher or a clown. She was reprimanded by the Rabbi for asking too many questions at the synagogue as a teenager. She went on making a career from asking questions, studying until she received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University in 1984. At the age of 33, she gained the status of “Superstar Professor” after publishing the book “Gender Trouble” (1990), which since was reprinted in more than 120 editions. Her work has made complex notions of gender identity more accessible and left an impact on mainstream culture. Despite being considered “hard to read”, she has since published more than 20 books, and contributed to many more publications, addressing a range of topics, from state vigilance to mourning, sexuality, international relations, and literature. Since 1993, Butler works at Berkley, University of California, currently serving as a Professor of Comparative Literature. In addition, she is active in several human rights organizations, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, Jewish Voice for Peace, and International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission board. Share: Read more...
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