Karl Liebknecht (13 August 1871-15 January 1919) was the co-founder of the Spartacist League with Rosa Luxemburg who was one of the major leaders of the Spartacist Uprising and other Marxist uprisings during the 1918-1919 German Revolution.
Biography[]
Karl Liebknecht was born on 13 August 1871 in Leipzig, Saxony, German Empire to a family that was involved in politics. He became a lawyer and had socialist views, taking part in the smuggling of leftist propaganda into the Russian Empire as well as defending people charged with leftist crimes. In 1912, he was elected to the Reichstag as a member of the German Social-Democratic Party, and in 1914 he formed the Spartacus League with other Marxist anti-World War I activists. In 1919, he led the Spartacist Uprising during the German Revolution, seeking to overthrow the corrupt Weimar Republic and have a communist state rule Germany. Along with Spartacist co-founder Rosa Luxemburg, he was captured and executed by firing squad by the Freikorps in Berlin on 15 January 1919.