 Rosa Luxemburg |  Karl Liebknecht |
article by Wagner Hertzog
The Spartacus League was a striking and historical, but ephemeral German political movement with revolutionary, marxist and socialist tendencies, founded in Germany in 1915, during World War I, and its most prominent members were Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, both affiliated with the leftist wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Both left, after the party expressed support for the German Empire in a declaration of war against the Russian Empire. Unhappy with the political guidelines for power in Germany during this period, both Liebknecht and Luxemburg were arrested for publicly speaking out against the war. With the Kaiser's resignation, and the end of the monarchy, the world, as the Germans knew it, was over, and the nation invariably plunged into chaos, disorder and political instability. With ideas based on what Liebknecht defined as a "Free Socialist Republic" - naively believing that such a republic would be born from the ashes of the German Empire - one of the principles the Spartacus League advocated was the state recognizing and taking into consideration the needs of the proletariat, and giving the working class a greater role in the government. At the end of 1918, the Spartacus League finally became the Communist Party of Germany. It became active at the beginning of the following year's notorious, but ill-fated, Spartacus Rebellion which, possibly inspired by the Russian Revolution, took place in the first weeks of January 1919, initially inflated by the ordinary working class, with the clear objective of destabilizing the Weimar Republic, and declaring its opposition to the ongoing political state of affairs. Raising barricades through the streets of Berlin and invading the headquarters of a newspaper that published articles hostile to the Spartacus League, the workers and sympathizers of the cause resisted for eleven days in the busy streets of Berlin, believing they were initiating a historic, promising and forceful insurrection, which, ironically, would soon come to an end, for lack of strength and resistance. The rebellion, which occurred suddenly, without any kind of logistical or military support, was in fact doomed to failure from the outset, and with the help of the Freikorps - anticommunist paramilitary units composed entirely of volunteers - the uprising was quickly crushed by the government. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were immediately arrested, and they were both executed shortly thereafter, which invariably led to the rapid dissolution and eventual demise of the Spartacus League. Unfortunately, an extremely fragile organization from the beginning, it was never able to properly offer consistent resistance to its political opponents, or even consolidate a solid and cohesive agenda of social change.
Wagner
The Spartacus League was a striking and historical, but ephemeral German political movement with revolutionary, marxist and socialist tendencies, founded in Germany in 1915, during World War I, and its most prominent members were Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, both affiliated with the leftist wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Both left, after the party expressed support for the German Empire in a declaration of war against the Russian Empire. Unhappy with the political guidelines for power in Germany during this period, both Liebknecht and Luxemburg were arrested for publicly speaking out against the war. With the Kaiser's resignation, and the end of the monarchy, the world, as the Germans knew it, was over, and the nation invariably plunged into chaos, disorder and political instability. With ideas based on what Liebknecht defined as a "Free Socialist Republic" - naively believing that such a republic would be born from the ashes of the German Empire - one of the principles the Spartacus League advocated was the state recognizing and taking into consideration the needs of the proletariat, and giving the working class a greater role in the government. At the end of 1918, the Spartacus League finally became the Communist Party of Germany. It became active at the beginning of the following year's notorious, but ill-fated, Spartacus Rebellion which, possibly inspired by the Russian Revolution, took place in the first weeks of January 1919, initially inflated by the ordinary working class, with the clear objective of destabilizing the Weimar Republic, and declaring its opposition to the ongoing political state of affairs. Raising barricades through the streets of Berlin and invading the headquarters of a newspaper that published articles hostile to the Spartacus League, the workers and sympathizers of the cause resisted for eleven days in the busy streets of Berlin, believing they were initiating a historic, promising and forceful insurrection, which, ironically, would soon come to an end, for lack of strength and resistance. The rebellion, which occurred suddenly, without any kind of logistical or military support, was in fact doomed to failure from the outset, and with the help of the Freikorps - anticommunist paramilitary units composed entirely of volunteers - the uprising was quickly crushed by the government. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were immediately arrested, and they were both executed shortly thereafter, which invariably led to the rapid dissolution and eventual demise of the Spartacus League. Unfortunately, an extremely fragile organization from the beginning, it was never able to properly offer consistent resistance to its political opponents, or even consolidate a solid and cohesive agenda of social change.
Wagner
