Rosa Luxemburg - Infinite Women

Born: 5 March 1871, Poland
Died: 15 January 1919
Country most active: Poland, Germany
Also known as: Róża Luksemburg, Rozalia Luksenburg

The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was a Polish and naturalized German revolutionary socialist, orthodox Marxist, and anti-war activist. Born into a secular Jewish family in Congress Poland, she became a German citizen in 1897. Luxemburg earned a Doctor of Law in political economy from the University of Zurich in 1897, making her one of the first European women to do so. She was associated with various socialist and communist 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).
During World War I, Luxemburg co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League, which later became the KPD. She played a significant role in the November Revolution and co-founded the newspaper “Die Rote Fahne” (The Red Flag), a central organ of the Spartacist movement. While she considered the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 a mistake, she supported the overthrow of the SPD-ruled Weimar Republic. However, Friedrich Ebert’s SPD Cabinet suppressed the revolt by sending in the Freikorps, paramilitary groups mainly composed of World War I veterans, who captured, tortured, and executed Luxemburg and her comrade Karl Liebknecht during the rebellion.
Rosa Luxemburg’s political legacy has been complex due to her criticisms of both Leninist and more moderate social democratic forms of Marxism. Despite this ambivalence, she and Liebknecht were venerated as communist martyrs by the East German communist government. In contemporary Germany, the idolization of Luxemburg and Liebknecht remains an important tradition among the far-left. However, her stance against the 1918 independence of the Second Polish Republic and criticism from Stalinists have made her a contentious historical figure in the political discourse of modern Poland.