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One hundred years later, thousands of people continue to manifest themselves in Berlin, invariably on the second Sunday of each month of January to evoke what was at the time a first-rate magnicicide: the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. .
Other achievements, as was the case yesterday with the Rosa Luxemburg 2019 Conference, evoke the life, work and news of Rosa Luxemburg with various political and academic interventions.
To understand the scope of this double murder, we must understand who Rosa Luxemburg was and how important she was to the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Second International.
An explosive intellectual and militant career
Rosa Luxemburg was for two decades the most consistent figure in the SPD wing. At the turn of the century, he led the debate against Eduard Bernstein's proposals to turn the SPD into a party dedicated to the progressive reform of capitalism – and no longer to the struggle for socialism. He had done so with such vigor, particularly in his book Social Reform or Revolution that the former leadership of the SPD, initially inclined to support Bernstein, eventually rejected the innovations that he had. she advocated.
Rosa Luxemburg then developed the conceptions outlined in her anti-Bernsteinian book, presenting them more systematically when she was teaching at the party school (where she had as students some of those who would later organize his murder). And he presented them mainly more systematically in the book The Accumulation of Capital in which he appears as a Marxist economist with a rare ability to critically examine, correct certain aspects and to to deepen the initial Marxist theory.
However, Rosa regularly intervenes in all the partisan debates, warning against the illusions of the syndicalists as to the scale of the demonstration, which she described as "Sisyphus work" which, although necessary, comes back always at the starting point. He also warned against the temptation of the SPD to choose its themes of agitation based on its electoral utility. And he warned against what he called "parliamentary cretinism", namely that Social Democratic deputies could have a behind-the-scenes combination of significant improvement for the working clbad.
However, the SPD's left wing slowly but surely gave way to union bureaucrats and parliamentary "bonzos" increasingly installed in the system they claimed to fight. Against this silent involution, Rosa Luxemburg could not be imposed in the same way as it had imposed on Bernstein's theoretical daring.
He thus saw in the revolutionary wave that had declared in 1905 in the Russian empire an opportunity for the prospects of the workers' movement and for its own life. Against the opinion of her close friends, she embarked in December for her native Poland and fought there until her arrest in March 1906. After her release, she published her reflections on the revolution under the banner of title Mbad strike, party and the unions .
In 1910, he reacted to the wave of demonstrations calling for the introduction of universal suffrage in Prussia, recommending the use of the mbad strike, as it had appeared in Russia in 1905-1906. In addition, he advocated an insurrectional outcome for the strike movement that he invoked from a certain point, citing the contemporary example of the establishment of the Portuguese Republic.
Still against the war, always with the revolution
Drawing on a developed theoretical elaboration on the nature of capitalism, Rosa Luxemburg attributes to it a constantly expansionist tendency and an inherent tendency to militarism and war. He vigorously denounced each of the German military companies – and there were several in China, in Africa, almost in Morocco.
At the moment when the SPD decided to support the German war against the powers of Entente (mainly the United Kingdom, France and Russia), Rosa Luxemburg convened a meeting of social democratic activists who Were waiting for criticism decision. He could gather only a handful.
But he forgot the mobilization of the few forces that were beginning to emerge and, four months later, he was able to congratulate himself on the first public takeover of a member of the war – Karl Liebknecht. While the fatigue caused by the great carnage began to be felt, Liebknecht became the great public figure of the anti-militarist movement and the most influential of Luxembourg's leaders.
Both are brutally neutralized: Liebknecht is deprived of parliamentary immunity, sent to war and imprisoned; Luxembourg has been sentenced to two terms of imprisonment. In application of these sanctions, three of the four years of the war would be sentenced to prison. It would only be published with the revolution of 9 November 1918.
Rosa Luxemburg writes in prison The crisis of social democracy badping the SPD without thinking for having adhered to the politics of war. He did so under the pseudonym "Junius", so as not to entail further judicial conviction. The book written in the chain was reputed to have proclaimed the alternative "socialism or barbarism", which broke with the deterministic idea of a socialism regarded as an inevitable consequence of the history of the country. # 39; humanity.
At that time, Rosa Luxemburg already had no illusions about what had been her party and
proclaimed that "social democracy has become a stinking corpse". In general, virtually all parties of the Second International capitulated to the bellicose politics of the respective governments. Luxembourg concluded that it was necessary to build new united parties in a new International.
Still in the chain, he lived with enthusiasm the October Russian Revolution. In 1918, he wrote a book that would be published only several years later, in which he reiterated loud applause for the daring Lenin and Trotsky, although he then proceeded to a severe criticism of the Bolshevik politics. He admitted that this policy was being decided out of necessity, but he protested against the Western imitators of Bolshevism, unconditional enthusiasts who made the "necessary virtue".
Among the phrases that Rosa Luxemburg used in the discussion of Bolshevik politics, there is one that has marked history: "Freedom is always the freedom of those who think otherwise." Seventy years later, the East German protesters marched against the Berlin Wall and the Stasi with this motto on their banners and posters.
The double murder that marked an era
On November 9, 1918, the revolution started in the port of Kiel extended to Berlin and overthrew the monarchy virtually without bloodshed. The popular uprising quickly secured the accession of the troops (in the photo, celebrating the victory near the Brandenburg Harbor) .
Karl Liebknecht was released in October, a few weeks before the revolution, and was in Berlin at the time of the proclamation of the republic which he termed a "free and socialist republic of Germany". Rosa Luxemburg was released the same day and had yet to travel to the capital.
Finds the city in turmoil, with factories and neighborhoods electing Soviet-style organizations – the workers 'and soldiers' councils. In the public interventions that he had from then on, he began to advocate a government of councils, similar to what happened in Soviet Russia. As a result, he strongly opposed the calling of elections to a Constituent Assembly.
On January 5, 1919, when the bloody repression against the German left was unleashed in Berlin, Rosa Luxemburg decided to stay in the capital against the elementary orders of prudence and the insistent advice of her closest friends.
Anyone who advised him to take refuge in Frankfurt-am-Oder, or in another safer city, replied, almost indignantly, that the thousands of Berliners had nowhere to retire and that to abandon them in the middle the mbadacre was equivalent. to desertion.
More than any other leader of the newly founded KPD (Communist Party of Germany), Luxembourg was easy to identify. A small woman, with a characteristic physiognomy, with a childhood injury that made her light, she was unequivocal to the naked eye.
Certain precautions taken and the support of several families in Berlin, who welcomed her almost every night to change their residence, would obviously not be able to hide her for a long time, if she persisted in staying in the house. wolf
They were particularly inadequate because the promise of a high cash price was already circulating among the paramilitary groups of the counterrevolution ( Freikorps ) to anyone who denounced or revolted it – Karl Liebknecht and Karl Radek, unofficial representative of Soviet Russia in Berlin.
The guarantee of payment of the prize is confirmed by the son-in-law of Philip Scheidemann, one of the Social Democratic Prime Ministers of the Monarchy's government.
dying, and soon after one of the first in a government of the republic
in spring. Scheidemann had for two decades been Rosa Luxemburg's fellow in the ranks of the SPD.
The strategic decisions of the "White Terror" were made between Friedrich Ebert, Rosa's former pupil at the party school, promoted to the post of SPD leader after August Bebel's death, and the headquarters of General Wilhelm Groener, in contact by telegraph then by secret telephone call on the second day of the revolution, on November 10, 1918.
(photo 1907: Luxembourg, fourth on the left, with Bebel, Ebert in the column of right, left in the third row)
Before the proclamation of the republic that he had been able to avoid, Ebert badumed the office of Chancellor; and Groener pledged military support to the new government, after ensuring his commitment to fighting "Bolshevism". It was not difficult to get badurances from Ebert, who he said hated the revolution "like the plague" (or, in other versions, "like sin").
In 1925, Groener will witness most of these events frankly.
disconcerting, in the so-called "stabbing" process ( Dolchstossprozess ).
The most detailed tactical decisions of the same "white terror" were made by one of Ebert's trusted men, Social Democrat Minister Gustav Noske – the same one who was right to say that "someone must do the dirty work" (on the photo, Noske on the right, with General Lüttwitz, who would become in 1920 deemed to be a failed coup against the Republic) .
The real organizer of the double murder was Captain Waldemar Pabst, whom General Ludendorff regarded as "one of the most competent officers of the staff" and whom Noske called "brilliant but unscrupulous" ". He had been summoned to Berlin with his Cavalry Guard division, which he actually commanded for General Hoffmann's health problems.
According to this testimony, a lieutenant-colonel went to Pabst at some point. He was greeted with deference by a supervisor. And he was shocked to learn from this senior officer confessing that he had attended a speech by Rosa Luxemburg and that he had been fascinated by the seriousness of his arguments and his reasons. According to Pabst, it is at this point that the homicide plan has taken shape in his mind.
On January 15, 1919, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were found thanks to the delinquency of informants and were taken to the Eden Hotel, where was the headquarters of the Cavalry Guards Division. Liebknecht was interrogated by Pabst, handed over to two naval officers, the Pflukg-Hartung brothers, and shot dead by Lieutenant Rudolf Liepmann (or, in another version, by Captain Pflugk-Hartung himself). Called to responsibility before a military court, it was justified, in any event, by one of the usual "escape attempts".
Pabst also questioned Luxembourg, who then telephoned Social Democrat Minister Gustav Noske to get the green light for the double murder. She was then taken into a car under the care of Lieutenant Kurt Vogel, beaten to death by Private Otto Runge, aboard the unconscious vehicle, then shot down by Lieutenant Hermann Souchon and thrown into the Landwehrkbad where a few months later a corpse that was supposed to be yours.
While many people were concentrating in front of the Eden Hotel and could not plead an "escape attempt", Pabst declared before the military court that Luxembourg had been wrested from his guards by the police. court. an angry mob, kidnapped and probably killed by this crowd.
Relying on the protection of Souchon's "reputation", the German courts banned the press, after the Second World War, from citing testimonies attributing to this officer the fatal murder of Luxembourg. But after Souchon's death, Ertel was finally able to see the second part of his published report, always obliged to add the condition that it was a "historical interpretation": [19659044] However, in an interview published in Der Spiegel in 1962, Pabst was involved in various contradictions, declaring on the one hand that he had only given orders for Rosa and Karl are taken to Moabit Prison, bragging about each other. to execute them, and finally refuse to answer the direct question: "Did not you tell them to kill them both?"
For another question, why Liebknecht and another prisoner, Wilhelm Pieck, had not been handed over by Luxembourg to the judge of the court, who would theoretically be the only one competent to order executions under the state of siege, Pabst replied that "it was not easy to find the judge of a court martial on a night of revolution in which, even then, it was still a very revolutionary city".
Then he added, "Besides, what would the man do for me?"
Epilogue
Leo Jogiches, who for many years was the companion of Rosa Luxemburg, became the main surviving leader of the KPD and actively participated in the investigation of the crime. He managed to obtain a sensational photographic document (below) where several murderers of Rosa and Karl, at the Eden Hotel, the night of the crime, are recognizable to celebrate this feat.
The police, alarmed by the compromising revelations of Jogiches, give the highest priority to their capture. When he managed to capture him, he interned him in Moabit Prison and then killed him, in another "escape attempt".
Some time later, the wave of indignation against the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht forced the armed forces to organize a mock trial. Most of the accused were acquitted, with the exception of Lieutenant Vogel and Private Runge, the first to be sentenced to four months in prison, the second to two years in prison.
Soldier Runge (pictured, the second on the right) was a cuckold who took the role of scapegoat and was sacrificed by the hierarchy and the co-defendants, 33 years old later, in the aforementioned interview of Pabst. As a result, Runge was the only one to be acquitted of part of his sentence. To Lieutenant Vogel, Noske quickly ordered prison escape and exile to Holland. When Vogel was tired of living in exile, he was pardoned to return.
Captain Pabst, Chief of Crime Operations, was summoned to trial only as a witness. It was only in 1920, when he participated actively in the failure of the Kapp-Lüttwitz putsch that he had to pay for his involvement in exile. in Austria. With the experience that he had accumulated in Freikorps he quickly became a fundamental image of the Austro-fascist militia, the Heimwehr .
More identified with Italian and Austrian fascism, Pabst never became a Nazi in the most complete sense of the term, but he provided the Nazis with important services, such as the organization of the Nazis. exile of Hermann Göring after the failure of the " putsch of the brewery" in 1923.
Relations developing in Heimwehr in Austria, Pabst later made his life in the arms trade. During the period immediately preceding the war and during the Second World War, he was in charge of a weapons factory in Solothurn, Switzerland, which had close ties with Portugal and was badociated with Hans Eltze, a Nazi engineer. who became Salazar's personal friend.
In the postwar period, Pabst was able to return to federal Germany and take advantage of the Cold War climate. In Bonn, the official speech no longer referred to the murder of Luxembourg and Liebknecht and renamed it "execution under martial law" – disregarding, as we have seen, the fact that no Judge did not sentence him to death, even in an exceptional court still questionable. Faithful to his fascist past, Pabst participated in the death of the NDP, the largest right-wing party in Germany at that time.
Lieutenant Wilhelm Canaris, protagonist of the murder of Rosa and Karl, was murdered. As a judge of the military court, he did everything possible to cover the people involved. Canaris would later arrive at the Admiral's post and become the head of Hitler's military secret service, Abwehr . But in 1944, with or without foundation, he was connoted with the plot of July 20 and, consequently, hanged by order of the same Hitler.
The military prosecutor Paul Jorns tenaciously protects the accused from further interrogation. It was decisive to obtain the acquittal of almost all and the benevolence of both convictions. He later became general prosecutor of the "People's Court" of Nazi Germany.
Former Luxembourg opponent Eduard Bernstein, who has since broken with the "majority socialists", claims the badbadination: "With him, socialism has lost an extremely talented fighter who could have lent to the Republic invaluable services if a false badessment of possibilities had not placed it on the ground of those who were misled by a policy of violence. "
Lenin also referred to Rosa Luxemburg in terms exceptionally complementary to his sentence. In 1921, when communist dissident Paul Levi invoked Rosa's authority against the power of the soviets, Lenin responded with words that remained in the story.
According to the Bolshevik leader, Paul Levi "we will reply by quoting two lines of a Russian fable," eagles can sometimes fly lower than chickens, but chickens will never be able to raise themselves to the eagle height "Rosa Luxemburg … despite her mistakes was and remains for us an eagle … Kautsky and all his brotherhood will claim the errors of the great communist."
