Rosa Luxemburg (5 March 1871-15 January 1919) was a Marxist revolutionary from Poland who was one of the founders of the Spartacus League in Germany alongside Karl Liebknecht, as well as the founder of Luxemburgism. After the Spartacist Uprising broke out in 1919, the government-supported far-right Freikorps murdered Luxemburg and Liebknecht.
Biography[]
Roza Luksemburg was born on 5 March 1871 in Zamosc, Congress Poland, Russian Empire (now in Lublin Voivodeship, Poland) to a family of Polish Jews. She was a member of the Polish Socialist Party and was active about her views on Marxism, and in April 1897 she moved to the German Empire after becoming a citizen via marriage. During World War I, Luxemburg and fellow Marxist Karl Liebknecht created the Spartacus League out of opposition to the war, and Liebknecht and Luxemburg co-founded Die Rote Fahne ("The Red Flag"), a left-wing newspaper, after the German Revolution of November 1918. Luxemburg led the Spartacists in the Spartacist Uprising during the fighting against the Reichswehr and the Freikorps paramilitaries, and Waldemar Pabst had her butted on the back of the head with a rifle and then shot after the Berlin uprising was quelled. Her death was a blow to the communist/socialist cause in Germany.