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“Rosa Luxemburg Belongs to Us!” German Communism and the Luxemburg Legacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Eric D. Weitz
Eric D. Weitz
Affiliation:
Saint Olaf College
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Extract

Rosa Luxemburg's commitment to democratic politics stands as her most pronounced intellectual legacy. Her rhetoric, rarely mundane, becomes especially compelling and powerful when she invokes the creative potential of human beings to order their own affairs, the lifeblood of society pulsing through the actions of ordinary people. Especially her famed writings on the Russian Revolution have served as the intellectual wellsprings for an alternative socialist politics beginning with Paul Levi (her successor as head of the Communist party of Germany) in 1922 and continuing through the entire history of the twentieth- century Left. Written within months of the Bolshevik Revolution and while she still languished in prison, the oft-cited passages offer some of the finest expressions of her democratic sensibilities. In the margins she wrote what would become one of her most famous passages, the central phrase of which— “Freiheit ist immer Freiheit der Andersdenkenden”— was unfurled at the Liebknect-Luxemburg counterdemonstration in January 1988 in the German Democratic Republic and became the clarion call of the opposition in its early phase.

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Articles
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Central European History , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 27 - 64
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Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1994

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References

1. Luxemburg, Rosa, “Zur russischen Revolution,” in Gesammelte Werke, 5 vols. (Berlin, 1970–1975), vol. 4, 5th printing (1990): August 1914 his Januar 1919, (hereafter GW:4), 359.Google Scholar In this edition, the crucial passage was placed in a footnote along with the comment that it was written in the margins without a mark indicating its placement in the text. The passage was widely known, however, so GDR citizens must have read footnotes. They might also have encountered the passage in Oelssner's, Fred attack, Rosa Luxemburg: Eine kritische biographische Skizze (Berlin, 1952), 124, where her call for freedom of thought was labelled “dangerous … and in the revolution it leads unavoidably to defeat because it signifies freedom for the counterrevolution.”Google ScholarLevi, Paul, who first published the pamphlet as Die Russische Revolution (Berlin, 1922), made the crucial passage an integral part of the text, which has been followed in other editions, including the English-language one translated by Bertram D. Wolfe in 1940 and republished by himGoogle Scholar in Luxemburg, Rosa, The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? (Ann Arbor, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the West German editions edited by Flechtheim, Ossip K., Die russische Revolution (Frankfurt am Main, 1963)Google Scholar and Luxemburg, Rosa, Politische Schriften, vol. 3 (Frankfurt am Main. 1968).Google Scholar In 1928 Felix Weil made some important textual changes and additions to Levi's edition, but these did not alter the overall sense of her writing: “Rosa Luxemburg über Russische Revolution,” Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbeuwegung 13 (Leipzig, 1928): 285–98. In the manuscript, the paragraph with the phrase “Freiheit ist immer Freiheit der Andersdenkenden” is in the margins, but does have an insertion mark at the end. However, there is no corresponding mark in the text, a practice Luxemburg followed with other marginal comments that she meant to be included in the body of the text. My guess is the Luxemburg simply forgot to place the mark in the text, I looked at photocopies of the original in the Luxemburg papers, Institut für Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Zentrales Parteiarchiv (hereafter IGA, ZPA) NL 2/15, “Zur russischen Revolution,” B1. 100.Google Scholar A photo of the important page is included in Laschitza, Annelies, ed., Rosa Luxemburg und die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden: Extraausgabe des unvollendeten Manuskripts “Zur russischen Revolution” und anderer Quellen Zur Polemik mit Lenin (Berlin, 1990), 152.Google Scholar Along with the Gesammelte Werke cited above, critical to any reading of Luxemburg, are the Gesammelte Briefe, 5 vols., ed. Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED (Berlin, 1982–1984) (hereafter GB). One or two additional volumes of each, translations from her Polish writings, are currently in the works. For the history of the Luxemburg publications,Google Scholar see Laschitza, Annelies, “Zum Umgang mit Rosa Luxemburg in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung (hereafter BZG) 33 no. 4 (1991): 435–52.Google Scholar

2. Luxemburg, “Zur russischen Revolution,” 360, 362.Google Scholar

3. The literature on Luxemburg is voluminous, and the vast majority of it is rather uncritical, at times hagiographical. Even Nettl, Peter, in his magisterial biography, Rosa Luxemburg, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1966), is a bit too uncritical of his subject, and Hannah Arendt's critical acumen also wanes when it comes to Luxemburg: “Rosa Luxemburg, 1871–1919,”Google Scholar a review of Nettl's biography originally published in the New York Review of Books in idem, Men in Dark Times (New York, 1968), 33–56.Google ScholarEley's, Geoff insightful essay, “The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg,” Critique (Glasgow) 12 (Autumn-Winter 1979–1980): 139–49,Google Scholar provides one of the few critical readings of Luxemburg. Eley's comments are built around a review of Norman Geras's interesting but flawed work, The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg (London, 1976). Georg W. Strobel, in another exception from the generally uncritical considerations of Luxemburg,Google Scholar offers a scathing critique in “Die Legende von der Rosa Luxemburg: Eine politisch-historische Betrachtung,” Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 28 no. 3 (September 1992): 373–94.Google Scholar While correct in many of his particular charges, Strobel's critique is so unrelenting that Luxemburg's complexities and contradictions fade from view. Ettinger's, Elzbieta recent and engaging Rosa Luxemburg: A Life (Boston, 1986) focuses on the personal side,Google Scholar while Abraham, Richard, Rosa Luxemburg: A Life for the International (Oxford, 1989) provides a very effective and midly critical overview of her life and politics. The leading German historian of the KPD/SED, Hermann Weber, is also largely uncritical of Luxemburg. He sees only the democratic aspects of her politics, not the revolutionary elements that facilitated the incorporation of her ideas into the official ideology of the KPD/SED. In a particularly misplaced effort to distinguish among bureaucratic-dictatorial, revolutionary, and democratic communism, he places Luxemburg only in the latter camp, thereby ignoring her pronounced revolutionary commitments, and fails to provide any critical appraisal of her views. See his essays,Google Scholar“Die SED and Rosa Luxemburg,” in Weber, Hermann, Aufbau und Fall einer Diktatur: Kritische Beiträge Zur Geschichte der DDR (Cologne, 1991), 154–57;Google Scholar“Demokratischer Kommunismus: Robert Havemann und die Problematik des demokratischen Kommunismus in der DDR,” in Weber, Kommunistische Bewegung und realsozialistischer Staat, ed. Werner, Müller (Cologne, 1988), 104–15 and esp. 106–8;Google Scholar and “Einleitung,” in Weber, , ed., Der Gründungsparteitag der KPD: Protokoll und Materialien, (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), 47–48. For discussions and examples of the continuing interest in Luxemburg, see many of the contributions to the 1990 symposium on Luxemburg hosted by the Institut für Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung and published in BzG 33 no. 4 (1991);Google ScholarTrotnow, Helmut, “Vom Ende keine Spur—Die Historike werden immer noch von Rosa Luxemburg fasziniert,” Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 27 no. 1 (March 1991): 43–49;Google Scholar and the contributions to a symposium held in Italy in the 1970s, published in Basso, Lelio, ed. Rosa Luxemburg e lo sviluppo del pensiero marxista, in Annali del Fondazione Lelio e Lisli Basso-Issoco (Rome, 1976).Google Scholar Manfred Scharrer, virtually alone among the participants in the Berlin symposium, provides a critical assessment of Luxemburg's, politics in “Demokratie und Diktatur bei Rosa Luxemburg,” BzG 33 no. 4 (1991): 469–74. Luxemburg has had resonance far beyond academic circles and the traditional parties of the LEFT. She has served as the inspiration for a number of artistic efforts and has been claimed by new social movements and especially by feminists. Though some feminists have attacked Luxemburg for her relative silence on women's issues, by and large the reception in these circles has been as uncritical as that among academics and those who identify with the social democratic and communist movements. For just a few examples,Google Scholar see Kristine, von Soden, ed., Zeitmontage: Rosa Luxemburg (Berlin, 1988);Google ScholarBronner, Stephen Eric, A Revolutionary for Our Times: Rosa Luxemburg (London, 1981);Google ScholarCynthia, Navaretta, ed., Voices of Women: 3 Critics on 3 Poets on 3 Heroines (New York, 1980);Google ScholarMay, Stevens, Melissa, Dabakis, and Janis, Bell, eds., Rosa/Alice, Ordinary/Extraordinary (New York, 1988), catalogue of a 1988 exhibit by May Stevens, as well as the commentary by Carol Jacobsen, “Two Lives: Ordinary/Extraordinary,” Art in America (February 1989): 153ff.;Google Scholar and of course Margarethe von Trotta's extraordinary film, “Rosa Luxemburg,” reviewed by Eley, Geoff in the American Historical Review 94 no. 4 (October 1989): 1039–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a particularly strained reading of Luxemburg as a feminist, see Dunayevskaya, Raya, Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution, 2nd ed. (Urbana, 1991).Google Scholar

4. By focusing on language I do mean, in Peter Schöttler's Foucauldian-derived definition of discourse, “a socially institutionalised mode of speech/writing with effects of power and or/assistance …” Or as he quotes Foucault's programmatic statement: “… one no longer attempts to uncover the great enigmatic statement that lies hidden beneath its [discourse's] signs; one asks how it functions; what representation it designates, what elements it cuts out and removes, how it analyses and composes, what play of substitutions enables it to accomplish its role of representation.” Schöttler, Peter, “Historians and Discourse Analysis,” History Workshop Journal 27 (Spring 1989): n. 2, 55, 41–42.Google Scholar The quote is from Foucault's The Order of Things. In the case of Luxemburg, this means exploring the way she develops a discourse with specific words and phrases that inspire sympathies and activism, but that also create exclusions. However, ideas are not reducible to or identical with language; language may be constitutive of meaning, but the content of ideas is also subject to intellectual critique. Hence, I hold on to a distinction between language and ideas in this paper, and attempt to address both. Finally, I accept here, in perhaps modified fashion, the poststructuralist insight that texts are subject to diverse readings, and that authorial intent may be less relevant than the uses to which texts are put by their diverse audiences. In Luxemburg's case, the very complexity and instability of her ideas and language made their meanings extremely mobile and open to a wide range of interpretations. Helpful on language and the wide-ranging debate about poststructuralism are Schöttler, “Historians and Discourse Analysis” Dirks, Nicholas B., Eley, Geoff, and Ortner, Sherry B., “Introduction,” in the collection they edited, Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton, 1994), 3–45;Google Scholar the discussion in Berlanstein, Lenard R., ed., Rethinking Labor History: Essays on Discourse and Class Analysis (Urbana, 1993); the special issue of Central European History 22, nos. 3/4 (September/December 1989) on “German Histories: Challenges in Theory, Practice, Technique,” and especially Jane Caplan's essay, “Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and Deconstruction: Notes for Historians,” 260–78;Google Scholar and Scott, Joan Wallach, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988).Google Scholar

5. Flechtheims's, Ossip K.Die KPD in der Weimarer Republik (1948; Hamburg, 1986), for example, hardly mentions anything about Luxemburg after her death. Weber's essays, “Die SED and Rosa Luxemburg”; “Demokratischer Kommunismus: Robert Havemann und die Problematik des demokratischen Kommunismus in der DDR”; and “Einleitung,” Gründungsparteitag, all convey the idea that Luxemburg's legacy was simply misappropriated by the party.Google Scholar

6. These efforts serve as one part of a larger historical exploration of the formative history of the KPD and its influence on the development of the German Democratic Republic in the post-World War II world. A more complete account would need to engage also the sociopolitical history of the Weimar Republic and its impact on the party, but here I will restrict myself to the ideological, linguistic, and cultural dimensions.Google Scholar

7. See Weber, Hermann, Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus: Die Stalinisierung der KPD in der Weimarer Republik, 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main, 1969) and, along with many other writings, his recent collection of essays, Kommunistische Bewegung, see n. 3. Similar views may be found in other standard histories, e.g., Flechtheim, Die KPD in der Weimarer Republik;Google ScholarBahne, Siegfried, Die KPD und das Ende von Weimar: Das Scheitern einer Politik 1932–1935 (Frankfurt am Main, 1976);Google Scholar and Heinrich August Winkler's three-volume trilogy on Weimar labor, which generally follows Weber in relation to the KPD: Von der Revolution zur Stabilisierung: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weinarer Republik 1918 bis 1924 (Berlin, 1984);Google ScholarDer Schein der Normalität: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1924 bis 1930 (Berlin, 1988);Google Scholar and Der Weg in die Katastrophe: Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Weimarer Republik 1930 bis 1933 (Berlin, 1990). For views from the former GDR and other former socialist countries, see many of the contributions to the 1990 symposiumGoogle Scholar on Luxemburg, in BzG 33 no. 4 (1991). For a different argument that stresses the long-term continuities in German communist (and liberal, socialist, and conservative) politics,Google Scholar see Herf, Jeffrey, “Multiple Restorations: German Political Traditions and the Interpretation of Nazism, 1945–1946,” Central European History 26 no. 1 (1993): 21–55. While the political motivations for the Luxemburg revival and the reappraisals of the KPD in the former GDR are understandable, these efforts do little to move along the theoretical and practical efforts to deepen German democracy.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. The connection between the different phases of communist history is a major theme, perhaps the major theme, in Russian and Soviet historiography. In the German case, the break between two periods has gone virtually unquestioned.Google Scholar

9. See especially Luxemburg, “Sozialreform oder Revolution?,” (1899) in GW:1/1: 1893 bis 1905, 7th printing (1970; Berlin, 1990), 367–466, as well as numerous other writings from this period.Google Scholar In English as “Reform or Revolution?,” in Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, ed. Mary-Alice, Waters (New York, 1970), 33–90.Google Scholar

10. See especially Luxemburg, , “Die Revolution in Russland,” (1905) in GW:1/2: 1893 his 1905, 6th printing (1970; Berlin, 1988), 500–18; idem, “In revolutionärer Stunde: Was weiter?,” in GW:1/2, 554–72;Google Scholar and, most famously, idem, “Massenstreik, Partes und Gewerkschaften,” (1906) in GW:2: 1906 his Juni 1911, 5th printing (1972; Berlin, 1990), 91–170. The latter is excerpted in English as “The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions,” in Waters, ed., Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, 153–218.Google Scholar

11. Still useful are the classic essays by Kriegel, Annie, “Le parti modèle (La Social-Démocratic allemande et la IIe Internationale), in idem, Le Pain et les roses: Jalons pour une histoire des socialismes (Paris, 1968), 159–73,Google Scholar and by Nettl, J. P., “The German Social-Democratic Party 1890–1914 as a Political Model,” Past & Present 30 (1965): 65–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Most clearly in her famous “Junius-Brochure,” in GW:4, 49–164.Google Scholar See also the outline, “Entwurf zu den Junius-Thesen,” in ibid., 43–47, which, with some editorial changes, was published as an appendix to Junius as “Leitsätze über die Aufgaben der internationalen Sozialdemokratie,” as well as Luxemburg's exchange with Karl Liebknecht and Julian Marchlewski over the wording of the “Leitsätze,” Luxemburg to Karl Liebknecht, December 1915 and Luxemburg to Julian Marchlewski, December 1915, in Luxemburg, , GB:5, 89–92. An accessible, excerpted English translation of the Junius brochure is in Waters, ed., Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, 257–331.Google Scholar Her position is also articulated in the Spartakusbriefe, ed. Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED (Berlin, 1958), which were first published together by the KPD in the 1920s, and in many of her letters, e.g. Luxemburg to Carl Moor, 12 October 1914; to Hans Diefenbach, 1 November 1914; and to Franz Mehring, 31 August 1915, all in GB:5, 15–16, 19–20, 70–72. See also her first published comment on the collapse of the SPD and the International, which appeared in April 1915: “Der Wiederaufbau der Internationale,” in GW:4, 20.Google Scholar

13. Many of her letters from the war convey quite poignantly her deeply-felt sense of loss and despair, but also her determination to forge a revived socialist politics. The white heat of her anger against both the Majority and Independent Socialists is Sometimes even more evident in her letters than in her published writings, as in a letter to Mathilde Wurm, 28 December 1916, GB:5, 150–51. That she drew inspiration from the increasing levels of anti-war activism beginning in 1916 and then again from the Russian Revolution is clear from her letters. See, for example, Luxemburg to Helene Winkler, 11 February 1915; Marta Rosenbaum, 9 February 1917; Luise Kautsky, 15 April 1917; Marta Rosenbaum, 29 April 1917; all in GB:5, 46, 167–68, 207–8, 226–27.Google Scholar

14. Luxemburg, , “Die Nationalversammlung,” Die Rote Fahne (hereafter RF), 20 November 1918, GW:4, 407–10, quote 409.Google Scholar

15. Luxemburg, , “Zur russischen Revolution,” GW:4, 341.Google Scholar

16. Even Paul Levi, later to return to the Independent Social Democratic party (USPD) and then the Social Democratic party (SPD), never defended the intrinsic worth of parliamentary structures. See the passages in Weber, ed., Gründungsparteitag, 89–90, 134.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., 128.

18. Luxemburg, “Was will der Spartakusbund?” RF, 14 December 1918, GW:4, 440–49, esp. 446 and Weber, ed., Gründungsparteitag, 197–98. See also the speech by Lange at the founding congress introducing the discussion on the economic aspects of the program, in Weber, ed., Gründungsparteitag, 138–49 and esp. 147–48.Google Scholar

19. Luxemburg, , “Was will der Spartakusbund?” GW:4, 442.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., point 11:5, GW:4, 446. The Separtacus Group was the organization formed during the war by Rosa Luxemburg. It functioned within the SPD and then, beginning in 1917, the USPD. It became the major but not exclusive force behind the founding of the KPD. The Spartacus program, written by Luxemburg and published in mid-December 1918, was then adopted as the program for the KPD two weeks later at its founding congress.

21. Ibid., point 11:3, GW:4, 446.

22. Luxemburg, , “Zur russischen Revolution,” GW:4, 362–63.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., 363–64.

24. See Polan, A. J., Lenin and the End of Politics (London, 1984).Google Scholar

25. Luxemburg, “Eine Ehrenpflicht,” RF, 18 November 1918, GW:4, 404–6, quote 405.Google Scholar

26. Luxemburg, “Der Acheron in Bewegung,” RF, 27 November 1918, GW:4, 419–22, quote 419.Google Scholar

27. Weber, ed., Gründungsparteitag, 181. For a far more positive reading of Luxemburg's maximalism and her theoretical commitment to totality, see Lelio Basso, “II contributo di Rosa Luxemburg,” in idem, ed., Rosa Luxemburg, 15–27.Google Scholar

28. Luxemburg, “Auf die Schanzen,” RF, 15 December 1918, GW:4, 452–58, quote 451.Google Scholar

29. Luxemburg, “Parteitag der Unabhängigen SP,” RF, 29 November 1918, GW:4, 423–26, quotes 423, 424.Google Scholar

30. Luxemburg, “Das Versagen der Führer,” RF, 11 November 1919, GW:4, 523–26, quote 526.Google Scholar

31. Luxemburg, , “Was will der Spartakusbund?” GW:4, 448.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., 443.

33. Ibid., 443. See also her article, “Ein gewagtes Spiel,” RF, 24 November 1918, GW:4, 411–14.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., 443–44.

35. Ibid., 444–45.

36. Weber, ed., Gründungsparteitag, 222. Other delegates, like Paul Fröhlich, were less perceptive than Liebknecht and criticized what they saw as Luxemburg's blanket rejection of terror. See Gründungsparteitag, 202–4, as well as other contributions to the debate on 207–8 and 216–17.Google Scholar

37. Luxemburg, , “Was will der Spartakusbund?” GW:4, 449.Google Scholar

38. Freiheit, 17 December 1918, GW:4, 459.Google Scholar

39. Most fatefully in the poem published in the SPD organ Vorwärts two days before the assassination of Liebknecht and Luxemburg: Many hundreds of dead in a row, proletarians … Karl, Rosa, Radek & Company, None of them are there, none of them are there, proletarians! Quoted in Abraham, Rosa Luxemburg, 144. Die Rote Fahne collected many of these attacks in an article on the anniversary of her and Liebknecht's assassination: “Nie Vergessen! Die Bluthetze des ‘Vorwärts’ und der bürgerlichen Presse gegen Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg in den Januartagen 1919,” RF, 15 January 1933.Google Scholar

40. The concluding chapters of Nettl's Rosa Luxemburg, with their depiction of her personal and political commitments in the last months of her life, are still valuable and quite moving.Google Scholar

41. See the comments at the KPD's founding congress, e.g. Luxemburg: Our next task is to instruct the masses, in order to fulfill these tasks [of the revolution]…I say to you that it is thanks to the immaturity of the masses, who until now have not understood the importance of bringing the council system to victory, that the counterrevolution has succeeded in constructing the Constitutional Assembly as a bulwark against us. Weber, ed., Gründungsparteitag, 101. Liebknecht: …presently the great majority of the proletariat is not yet thoroughly educated in a revolutionary way. We are then compelled to use all means to win over and to enlighten the masses.Google ScholarIbid., 126.

42. I am drawing here on recent discussions concerning the interrelated notions of the public sphere and civil society, many of which proceed from Jürgen Habermas's classic work, recently translated into English as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, 1989).Google Scholar See also Craig, Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, 1992);Google ScholarCohen, Jean L. and Arato, Andrew, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, 1992);Google Scholar Seyla Benhabib, “Autonomy, Modernity, and Community: Communitarianism and Critical Social Theory in Dialogue,” and Cohen, Jean and Arato, Andrew, “Politics and the Reconstruction of the Concept of Civil Society,” both in Axel, Honneth et al. , eds., Cultural-Political Interventions in the Unfinished Project of the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1992), 39–59 and 121–42.Google Scholar

43. See especially Zetkin, Clara, Um Rosa Luxemburgs Stellung zur russischen Revolution (Hamburg, 1922)Google Scholar and Warski, Adolf, Rosa Luxernburgs Stellung zu den taktischen Problemen der Revolution (Berlin, 1922). Feliks Tych has recently published three unknown letters of Luxemburg's from the Central Party Archive of the Institute for Marxism-Leninism (since renamed) in Moscow, which clearly demonstrate that Luxemburg stood by her critique of the Bolshevik Revolution and that she intended to publish her pamphlet.Google Scholar See Tych, Feliks, “Drei unbekannte Briefe Rosa Luxemburgs über die Oktoberrevolution,” Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung 27 no. 3 (September 1991): 357–66.Google Scholar

44. Pieck, Wilhelm, “Vorwort,” in Luxemburg, Rosa, Ausgewählte Reden und Schriften, 2 vols., ed. Marx-Engels-Lenin-Institut beim ZK der SED (Berlin, 1951), 6–7.Google Scholar

45. For just two examples in which she was marshalled in defense of the party leadership against the “right” and the “reconcilers” and in support of the intransigent politics of the Comintern's “third period,” see “Der 15. Januar,” RF, 15 January 1929, 2, and “Von Spartakus zum Bolschewismus,” RF, 15 January 1930.Google Scholar

46. Ruth Fischer compared “Luxemburgism” with a “Syphilisbazillus,” quoted in Weber, , Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus, 1:90.Google Scholar

47. For just a few examples: Fritz Heckert, “Zum zehnten Jahrestag unserer Partei,” RF, 30 December 1928; “Von Spartakus zum Bolschewismus,” RF, 15 January 1930; Heckert, Fritz, “Der 15. Januar 1919: Zum dreizehnten Todestag von Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg,” Inprekorr 3 (1932): 66–67, a particularly unrelenting and mendacious attack; “Der Leninismus und die Linken in der Vorkriegssozialdemokratie,” RF, 15 January 1933. For a summary and an analysis of the attempt to identify “Trotskyism” and “Luxemburgism,”Google Scholar see Weber, , Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus, 1:89–97.Google Scholar

48. Josef V. Stalin, “Zu einigen Fragen der Geschichte des Bolschewismus,” RF, 22 November 1931.Google Scholar

49. For examples: Popow, N., “Die Idealisierung des Luxemburgismus ist die Fahne unserer Feinde,” Inprekorr 117 (1931): 2677–79, a particularly unrelenting critique;Google Scholar“Die historischen Erfahrungen des Boschewismus und das internationale Proletariat: (Zu der L.L.L.-Kampagne im Januar),” Inprekorr 120 (1931): 2785–87; and Luxemburg, Ausgenwählte Reden. The first one hundred or so pages of this GDR edition of Luxemburg's work consist of Stalin's article and other critiques of Luxemburg by Lenin.Google Scholar For a discussion, see Lewin, Erwin, “Einige Aspekte der Wirkung von Stalins Luxemburg-Urteil 1931 in der Komintern,” BzG 33 no. 4 (1919): 483–93.Google Scholar

50. On the historical formation of the party's strategy in the Weimar period, see Weitz, Eric D., “State Power, Class Fragmentation, and the Shaping of German Communist Politics, 1890–1933,” Journal of Modern History 62 no. 2 (June 1990): 253–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a discussion of the intersections between party strategies and conceptions of gender, see Weitz, Eric D., Popular Communism: Political Strategies and Social Histories in the Formation of the German, French, and Italian Communist Parties, 1919–1948, Cornell University Western Societies Program Occasional Paper no. 31 (Ithaca, 1992). Specifically on the gendered nature of communism in the Weimar Republic,Google Scholar see Kontos, Silvia, “Die Partei kämpft wie ein Mann”: Frauenpolitik der KPD in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main, 1979).Google Scholar On the GDR see, most recently, Gisela, Helwig and Nickel, Hildegard Maria, eds., Frauen in Deutschland 1945–1992 (Berlin, 1993).Google ScholarWeber, , in Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus, 1:97, sees only the condemnations of Luxemburg, not how her legacy was mobilized effectively by the party.Google Scholar

51. Amid a very large literature on rituals and, in particular, demonstrations, I have found especially useful Kaplan, Temma, Red City, Blue Period: Social Movements in Picasso's Barcelona (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992);Google ScholarRyan, Mary, “Gender and Public Access: Women's Politics in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Calhoun, , ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere, 259–88;Google ScholarRyan, Mary, “The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order,” in Lynn, Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), 131–53;Google Scholar and Kertzer, David I., Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven, 1988).Google Scholar

52. See the account “‘Unser Schiff zieht seinen geraden Kurs fest und stolz dahin bis Zum Ziel’: Impressionen am Wege unserer traditionellen Demonstration zur Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde,” Neues Deutschland (hereafter ND), 10/11 January 1987, 9.Google Scholar

53. See for example Ozouf, Mona, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1988), 61–82, which has some scattered discussions of funerals; the oft-repeated story of Victor Hugo's grand funeral in 1885,Google Scholar which purportedly helped solidify the Third Republic, in Juin, Hubert, Victor Hugo, vol. 3: 1870–1885 (Paris, 1986), 307–26; and August Bebel's great funeral in Zürich as reported in Vorwärts. 17 August 1913 (“Der stille Bebel”) and 18 August 1913 (“Bebels Leichenbegängnis”). Bebel's funeral, like Hugo's, was a wellorganized affair, with dignitaries from the SPD and the Second International well in attendance. But the great popular outpouring, again like Hugo's, added another dimension. The Vorwärts reports played up both elements to demonstrate the great stature of the SPD and the internationalism of the socialist movement. The party press also drew an interesting contrast between Zürich and Berlin. It noted the multiclass character of the mourners in Zürich, but expected an exclusively proletarian demonstration in Berlin given the reactionary and militaristic character of the other classes in the Prussian and German capital.Google Scholar

54. The order of the names was not merely alphabetical, but reflected the evaluation of the importance of each of the leaders, as propaganda directives to the party districts in late 1932 advised: “There cannot be a shred of doubt that Lenin stands ahead of Luxemburg and Liebknecht.” Agitprop Abteilung des ZK der KPD. “Lenin. Liebknecht. Luxensburg: Rede-Dispositionen for LLL-Feiern und -Kundgebungen 1933,” Bundesarchiv Koblenz R45 IV/39, Bl. 196ff., here Bl. 5 of pamphlet.Google Scholar

55. Bezirksleitung der KPD Halle-Merseburg, “Politischer Bericht des Bezirks Halle-Merseburg für die Monate Dezember 1926-Januar 1927,” IGA, ZPA I 3/11/16, Bl. 52–64, quote Bl. 62; Bezirksleitung des KPD Sekretariats, “Politischer Bericht des Bezirks Halle-Merseburg für die Monate November und December 1927 und January 1928,” IGA. ZPA I 3/11/16, Bl. 101–25, here Bl. 115–16.Google Scholar

56. See “Monatsbericht für Januar der Unterbezirksleitung der KPD Halle-Merseburg,” Landesverband Sachsen-Anhalt der PDS, Landesparteiarchiv Halle (hereafter LPAH) 1/2/ 3/3, Bl. 36; 1. Bezirksleitung der KPD—Provinz Sachsen, 2. Unterbezirksleitung der KPD—Halle-Merseburg, “Monatsbericht Januar,” 2 February 1946, LPAH I/2/3/3a, Bl. 25; “Tätigkeitsbericht der Kommunistischen Partei, Kreisleitung Zeitz, für den Monat February 1946,” LPAH 1/2/3/3a Bl. 176.Google Scholar

57. “In ihrem Geiste vorwärts! Auf nach Friedrichsfelde!” RF, 15 January 1933.Google Scholar

58. “So ehrte das rote Berlin seine Toten!” RF, 17 January 1933.Google Scholar

59. As late as the 1980s, Neues Deutschland's report on the demonstration accorded prominent place to the parade of the Kampfgruppen. See ND, 14 January 1980, and the photos of the all male Kampfgruppen accompanying the reports in ND, 18 January 1988, 3 and 16 January 1989, 3. In terms of Luxemburg's gendered language, see the previouslycited quote in which she accused the USPD of lacking “manly resolve.” (n. 29) Note also the oft-repeated story in which Luxemburg and Bebel converse about her and Clara Zetkin's epitaph. As rendered in von Trotta's film: Bebel: “Here lie two honorable, courageous women, whose untiring struggle for…” Luxemburg: Why not simply: “Here lie the last two men of German social democracy.” (Thanks to Rick McCormick of the University of Minnesota's German Department for the exact wording of the screenplay.)Google Scholar

60. RF, 15 January 1933.Google Scholar

61. “Den Toten die Ehre—uns die Pflicht,” ND, 16 January 1949, 3.Google Scholar

62. Wilhelm Pieck, “Wir erfüllen das Vermächtnis unserer Toten,” ND, 15 January 1950, 3.Google Scholar

63. See Lübbe, Peter, “Wandelt sich das ‘sozialreformistische’ Feindbild in der DDR?” Deutschland Archiv 21 no. 11 (November 1988): 1178–88, who analyzes SED attitudes toward the SPD in light of the agreement on disarmament signed between the two parties in 1987. In a rather unimaginative exercise, Lübbe has little difficulty putting together a string of quotations demonstrating the SED's continued hostility toward social democracy.Google Scholar

64. “Monatsbericht für Januar der Unterbezirksleitung der KPD Halle-Merseburg,” LPAH 1/2/3/3, Bl. 36; 1. Bezirksleitung der KPD—Provinz Sachsen, 2. Unterbezirksleitung der KPD—Halle-Merseburg, “Monatsbericht Januar,” 2 February 1946, LPAH l/2/3/3a, Bl. 25; “Tätigkeitsbericht der Kommunistischen Partei, Kreisleitung Zeitz, für den Monat February 1946,” LPAH 1/2/3/3a Bl. 176.Google Scholar In Kännemann, Erwin et al. , Vereint auf dem Weg zum Sozialismus: Geschichte der Landesparteiorganisation Sachsen-Anhalt der SED 1945 bis 1952, ed. Bezirksleitungen Halle und Magdeburg der SED (Halle, 1986), 194, the commemoration is given its old triple name, but I take this as a retrospective levelling of the history.Google Scholar

65. See Wilhelm Pieck, “Ich war—ich bin—ich werde sein: Rosa Luxemburg und Karl Liebknecht,” and Frida Rubiner, “In Memoriam Rosa Luxemburg,” in ND, 15 January 1947, 3; “Unvergessene Kämpfer für Frieden und Demokratie,” with photographs of Liebknecht and Luxemburg and a call to the traditional January demonstration, ND, 15 January 1948; “Kämpferin für Recht und Menschlichkeit: Rosa Luxemburg in ihren Briefen,” ND, 15 January 1948, 3; Käte Duncker, “Erinnerungen an Rosa Luxemburg,” ND, 15 January 1949, 3; “Den Toten die Ehre—uns die Pflicht,” ND, 16 January 1949, 3.Google Scholar

66. “Von Spartakus zum Bolschewismus,” RF, 15 January 1930.Google Scholar

67. RF, 13 January 1929. The KPD used the occasion to launch yet another attack on social democracy.Google Scholar

68. RF, 13 January 1929.Google Scholar

69. RF, 15 January 1933. Or as another oft-quoted slogan used to inspire party members went: “Honor to the dead, responsibility to us.” See “Den Toten die Ehre—uns die Pflicht,” ND, 16 January 1949, 3.Google Scholar

70. RF, 15 January 1930.Google Scholar

71. “So ehrte das rote Berlin seine Toten!” RF, 17 January 1933. For days beforehand, the party press carried instructions about where to meet and the march route.Google Scholar

72. “Mit der Stärkung unserer Republik erfüllen wir ihr revolutionäres Vermächtnis: Rede von Egon Krenz in der Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten,” ND, 18 January 1988, 3, and “Aufmarsch von über 200 000 Berlinern an den Gräbern von Karl und Rosa,” ND, 18 January 1988, 1, 3.Google Scholar

73. For example, “Ich war—ich bin—ich werde sein,” ND, 18 January 1949, 1–2.Google Scholar

74. As in “Rosa Luxemburg—Symbol deutsch-polnischer Verbundenheit,” ND, 15 January 1950, 3.Google Scholar

75. “In ihrem Geiste vorwärts! Auf nach Friedrichsfelde!” RF, 15 January 1933.Google Scholar

76. In 1950, for example, shortly after the victory of the Chinese Communist party, Neues Deutschland featured prominently a Chinese female partisan. See ND, 17 January 1950, photograph 1 and “Das befreite China grüsst die grossen Toten: Die Ansprache der chinesischen Partisanin Wang Wu An,” 2.Google Scholar

77. For a profound discussion of the efforts to create legitimacy in the GDR, see Meuschel, Sigrid, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft in der DDR: Zum Paradox von Stabilität und Revolution in der DDR 1945–1989 (Frankfurt am Main, 1992). For other examples of the party's use of history to construct its legitimacy, see the Central Committee's theses for the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the KPD, “70 Jahre Kampf für Sozialismus und Frieden, für das Wohl des Volkes: Thesen des Zentralkomitees der SED zum 70. Jahrestag der Gründung der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands,” ND, 14 June 1988, 3–8,Google Scholar and the Geschichte der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands, ed. Institut für Marxizmus-Leninisumus beim ZK der SED (Berlin, 1988), the first volume of which, some 850 pages long, carries the story only from the 1840s to 1917, i.e., even prior to the founding of the KPD! The Revolution of 1989/90 ended the prospects for the publication of the subsequent three volumes. For interesting commentary on the Central Committee's theses,Google Scholar see Weber, Hermann, “Geschichte als Instrument der Politik: Zu den Thesen de ZK der SED ‘Zum 70. Jahrestag der Gründung der KPD,’” Deutschland Archiv 21 no. 8 (August 1988): 863–72. Weber sees the theses as an effort to hold the line against Gorbachey's refrom policies.Google Scholar

78. Thälmann at a meeting of the Central Committee in February 1932, quoted in, “In ihrem Namen…, RF, 15 January 1933, 2. Thälmann did go on, however, to reiterate the standard criticisms to Luxemburg.Google Scholar

79. Wilhelm Pieck, “Das revolutionäre Erbe Rosa Luxemburgs und die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung,” ND, 4 March 1951. The occasion for this tribute was Luxemburg's birthday, not her assassination. Thälmann's actual words, as cited above, were: “Rosa Luxemburg und die anderen gehören zu uns…” (“In ihrem Namen…,” RF, 15 January 1933, 2) See also Pieck, “Vorwort,” in Luxemburg, Ausgewählte Reden, While the SED's official “Thesen zum 35. Jahrestage der Gründung der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands (1918–1953),” tended to slight Luxemburg's role, even Fred Oelssner, the SED's leading ideologist at the time and author of a rather scurrilous biography of Luxemburg, felt compelled to remind readers that Luxemburg was one of the most significant personalities of the European labor movement…A sharpwitted theoretician and writer of Marxism… a virulent enemy of opportunism, a helpful friend, always at the ready, of the exploited and oppressed, an unwearying agitator—that was Rosa Luxemburg… Rosa Luxemburg is especially precious to the German proletariat… The young generation of socialist fighters of course recognizes the name of this outstanding leader of workers, but not her life and work. It is therefore an urgent responsibility to development this knowledge among the masses. For the official theseGoogle Scholar see Zur Geschichte der Kommunistischen Partei Deutschlands: Eine Auswahl von Materialien und Dokumenten aus den Jahren 1914–1946, 2nd. ed., ed. Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin-Institut beim ZK der SED (Berlin, 1955), 444–62 and for Oelssner's biography, Rosa Luxemburg, 6–7. Weber, in “Die SED und Rosa Luxemburg,” 154–55, mentions only the vituperation directed against Luxemburg and “Luxemburgism” in Pieck's and Oelssner's writings and speeches in the 1950s.Google Scholar

80. Pieck, “Das revolutionäre Erbe.”Google Scholar

81. See n. 1.Google Scholar

82. For these examples see: “Schon seit Jahrzehnten in Friedrichsfelds dabei,” ND, 14 January 1980, 2; “Im Geiste von Karl und Rosa alle Kraft für Sozialismus und Frieden: ‘Unser Schiff zieht seinen geraden Kurs fest und stolz dahin bis zum Ziel,’” ND, 10/11 January 1987, 9; “Massenaufmarsch für Sozialismus und Frieden: Über 200 000 Berliner an den Gräbern von Karl und Rosa,” ND, 12 January 1987, 1, 3; “Machtvolle Demonstration für Sozialismus und Frieden: Aufamarsch von über 200 000 Berlinern an den Gräbern von Karl und Rosa,” ND, 18 January 1988, 1, 3.Google Scholar

83. “DDR—ein Eckpfeiler von Frieden und Sozialismus im Herzen Europas: Rede von Hermann Axen in der Gendenkstätte der Sozialisten,” ND, 12 January 1987, 3. For an earlier example, “Die Gedächtnisrede in der Staatsoper,” ND, 16 January 1949, 4.Google Scholar

84. “So ehrte das rote Berlin seine Toten!” RF, 17 January 1933.Google Scholar

85. For the more recent examples, see: “Massenaufmarsch für Sozialismus und Frieden: Über 200 000 Berliner an den Gräbern von Karl und Rosa,” ND, 12 January 1987; “Machtvolle Demonstration für Sozialismus und Frieden: Aufmarsch von über 200 000 Berlinern an den Gräbern von Karl und Rosa,” ND, 18 January 1988. The reports of the 1988 demonstration made no mention of the fact that counterdemonstrators had unfurled a sign with Luxemburg's famous line, “Freiheit ist immer Frieheit der Andersdenkenden,” which led to the arrest of over one hundred people.Google Scholar See Menge, Marlies, “Ohne uns Iäuft nichts mehr”: Die Revolution in der DDR (Stuttgart, 1990), 15–18, 247.Google Scholar

86. “Über 200 000 Berliner an den Gräbern von Karl und Rosa,” ND, 12 January 1987, 1, 3; “Aufmarsch von über 200 000 Berlinern an den Gräbern von Karl und Rosa,” ND, 18 January 1988, 1.Google Scholar

87. For some examples: “Das Vermächtnis von Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg ist in der DDR erfüllt: Wir wissen uns in einer grossen Kampftradition,” ND, 12/13, January 1980, 9; “Im Geist von Karl und Rosa entschlossen für die Stärkung des Friedens und des Sozialismus,” ND, 14 January 1980; “Werktätige mit hohen Verpflichtungen für weiteren Leistungsanstieg 1980/Bekenntnis zur Politik der Vollbeschäftigung, des Volkswohlstandes, des Wachstums und der Stabilität/…Leidenschaftliche Bekräftigung der antiimperialistischen Solidarität/Vorbeimarsch der Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse,” ND, 14 January 1980; “Die Sache der Revolutionäre liegt bei uns in guten Händen, ND, 15 January 1988, 3. Hermann Axen even found a quote from Luxemburg to support the notion that discipline and hard work for the fulfillment of the five-year plan signified a victory for socialism: “‘The socialist society needs men … [who are full of] passion and enthusiasm, for the general welfare, full of the joy of sacrifice and mutual sympathy…’” “DDR—ein Eckpfeiler,” ND, 12 January 1987, 3. I watched the “Rosa Luxemburg” army unit march during the televized celebration of the GDR's thirty-fifth anniversary in October 1984.Google Scholar

88. Wilhelm Pieck, “Wir erfüllen das Vermächtnis unserer Toten,” ND, 15 January 1950, 3.Google Scholar

89. “DDR—ein Eckpfeiler,” ND, 12 January 1987, 3.Google Scholar

90. As John Willoughby has written of another compelling and tragic figure, Nikolai Bukharin, one of the greatest tragedies lies in the fact that Bukharin's (like Luxemburgs's) democratic sensibilities had such weak grounding in his own theoretical approach, and thereby offered little upon which to build adequate resistance to left-wing tyranny. See Willoughby, John, “Confronting the New Leviathan: The Contradictory Legacy of Bukharin's Theory of the State,” in Nicholas, N. Kozlov and Eric, D. Weitz, eds., Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin: A Centenary Appraisal (New York, 1990), 93–106.Google Scholar

91. See Weitz, Popular Communism, for a comparative analysis of the strategies through which the German, French, and Italian Communist parties became mass parties.Google Scholar

92. In almost ritual fashion, year in and year out, the Comintern in the 1930s sharply condemned the “sectarianism” of the KPD and its unwillingness to engage in popular front politics. Indeed, the KPD never did manage to conclude a united or popular front agreement with the SPD and other groups on the model of the French, Italian, and Spanish Communist parties, a result of the intransigence of both the exiled SPD leadership in Prague and of the KPD. The Comintern criticisms of the KPD carry a tone of exasperation and frustration that became more pronounced in the course of the 1930s as the war loomed closer and the German population appeared mired in passivity. These impressions are based on Comintern documents in the IGA, ZPA, including an undated and untitled document which, based on internal evidence, is a transcription of a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Comintern (hereafter ECCI) with the Politbüro of the KPD. See IGA, ZPA 16/3/109, B1. 3–24. Participants were Knorin, Pieck, Florin, Bronkowski, Ercoli (Togliatti) Manuilski, Kuusinen, Wan-Mm, and Voss. See also “Resolution Ober die sektiererischen Fehler der KPD,” adopted by Political Secretariat and confirmed by Präsidium [of ECCI] IGA, ZPA 13/110, B1. 12–16 and ECCI (Sekretariat Ercoli), “Resolution zu den nächsten Aufgaben der KPD,” 17 March 1937, IGA, ZPA I 6/3/84, B1. 85–95. The attacks on the KPD were often spearheaded by Togliatti, who must have felt sweet revenge for the savaging of his own party and leadership at the hands of German Communists, Ulbricht prominent among them, in 1929 at the ECCI's Tenth Plenum.Google Scholar

93. See Weber's introduction to Gründungsparteitag and the conclusion to Die Wandlung des deutscheri Kommunismus, in which he states, in overly neat and simplistic fashion: “From the radical marxian-socialist party founded by Rosa Luxemburg developed the stalinist bureaucratic party [Apparatpartei], which oriented itself around the interests of Moscow.” (1: 350–51).Google Scholar

94. Many of the members of the opposition interviewed by Dirk Philipsen mention reading Luxemburg as part of their own political evolution. See idem, We Were the People: Voices from East Germany's Revolutionary Autumn of 1989 (Durham, 1993).Google Scholar