Karl Liebknecht

This paper includes:
- contributions of Friedrich Ebert and Gustav Stresemann for the Weimar Republic
- data of the specific events and years from 1918 - 1929
- comparison of their contributions, failures and successes
- slight changes to points from the textbook
This paper is adapted from OCR, GCSE Modern World History, Third Edition History textbook

This paper was first written as a Master's Thesis by the author for the history program ' Political Culture and National Identities' at Leiden University in 2017. The thesis received a 7.5 out of 10. A short abstract of the thesis follow below.

In this thesis the author analyses the events between November 9th, 1918 and January 15th 1919 in Germany and Berlin in particular. This period is characterised by political instability. The socialist movement had fractured during the First World War over the support of the war effort. Radical socialists were further emboldened by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.  The struggle between the three main factions of German socialism; the moderate MSPD, the independents of the USPD and the radical Spartakusbund, forms the core of this thesis. This thesis answers the question to what extent was the Spartacist Uprising a revolution to defend the November revolution or a counter revolution which would only damage the gains of the November revolution? By analysing primary sources such as newspapers, autobiographies and personal recollections the attitudes and opinions of these three parties the author traces the evolution these parties and their leaders underwent during the months November, December and January. Recent work by Mark Jones on the role of autosuggestion (self-generated beliefs allowing historical actors to truly and firmly believe that particular events were happening when they in fact were not) and the role and nature of revolutionary crowds provide additional perspectives how the main leaders of the three parties behaved during times of massive pressure.

In einer historischen Trilogie unter dem Obertitel „Vom Kaiserreich zur Republik“ verfasste Richard Müller, Metallarbeiter und Vorsitzender des Vollzugsrats der Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte  einen ungewöhnlichen Zeitzeugenbericht zur deutschen Novemberrevolution. Seine packend erzählten Bände erschienen 1924-1925, inspirierten Historiker wie Sebastian Haffner und sind Standardwerk und Geheimtipp zugleich.  Die drei Werke erscheinen in dieser Neuausgabe erstmals gebündelt in einem Band, ergänzt um eine Historische Einführung, eine Chronologie der Ereignisse sowie ein Personenregister.

This book charts ideas European intellectuals (mostly from Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy) put forward to solve the problem of war during the first half of the twentieth century: a period that began with the Anglo-Boer war and that ended with the explosion of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Such ideas do not belong to a homogeneous tradition of thought, but can be understood as a unique discourse that takes different characteristics according to the point of view of each author and of the specific historical situation.

1919-2019 ☆ Sull'Altare di Brest Litovsk furono sacrificati non solo Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht e Leo Jociches, assieme agli spartachisti che furono trucidati nella rivoluzione Tedesca, ma anche qualsiasi orizzonte comunista e Marx stesso. In questa ricostruzione eretica ed apocrifa emergono biografie, bibliografie non conformi alle "verità ufficiali" o di partito e ritratti diversi con ruolo e funzione di personaggi oscuri (sebbene osannati dalla mitologia leninista) come il 'Kommissar für Bolschewismus' Karl Radek.

Devrimci Marksizm, Bu sayı

Levent Dölek, Devrimci Marksist savaş politikası

Sungur Savran, Savaşa karşı savaş: Cihan Harbi’nde Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxemburg

Lev Davidoviç Trotskiy, Emperyalist savaş ve dünya proleter devrimi

Pierre Broué, İkinci Dünya Savaşı karşısında Trotskiy ve Trotskistler

Vladimir İlyiç Lenin, Kâhince sözler

Friedrich Engels, Sedan muharebesi üzerine

Friedrich Engels, Savaş Üzerine - XII

Friedrich Engels, Maddi nedenlerden çıkarılmış piyade taktiği (1700-1870)

Özgür Öztürk, Bukharin’in Marksizmi

Sungur Savran, 120 yıl sonra Friedrich Engels

Mehmet İnanç Turan, Kirov cinayeti

Devrimci Marksizm, Bu Sayı

Levent Dölek, Geleceğin enternasyonalinin örgütsel ve programatik temelleri

Sungur Savran, Komintern ya da dünya komünist partisi

Armağan Tulunay, Tarihin en büyük kadın devrimcisi: Rosa Luxemburg

Sungur Savran, 3L

Alec Nove, Marx, piyasa ve “uygulanabilir” sosyalizm

Ernest Mandel, Sosyalist planlamanın savunusu

Özgür Öztürk, Harari’nin kurguları

This book charts ideas European intellectuals (mostly from Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy) put forward to solve the problem of war during the first half of the twentieth century: a period that began with the Anglo-Boer war and that ended with the explosion of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Such ideas do not belong to a homogeneous tradition of thought, but can be understood as a unique discourse that takes different characteristics according to the point of view of each author and of the specific historical situation.

Au dire des professionnels du réformisme et des parlementaires du "programme minimum" qui guidaient les masses ouvrières d'Europe au début du siècle, les socialistes "ne s'occupaient pas de politique extérieure" et n'avaient pas d'opinion sur le problème de la guerre entre les États. Jusqu'au moment, naturellement, où la guerre envahit le terrain et domina la scène, "ils étaient contre toutes les guerres", et à ce sujet ne surent pas aller au-delà du vague "pacifisme" professé par les bourgeois et les anarchistes.
Cette pratique fut la digne prémisse de la politique d'"appui à toutes les guerres" dans laquelle sombrèrent les principaux partis européens lorsque éclata le cyclone de 1914. Alors les vauriens de l'opportunisme devenus alliés et ministres des pouvoirs impériaux bourgeois, commencèrent à accumuler les sophismes et à tricher sur le fait que le marxisme "ne condamnait pas toutes les guerres", mais en admettait certaines: il s'agissait naturellement de la leur, de la guerre appuyée en Allemagne par Scheidemann et Cie, en France par Guesde et Cie, en Autriche par Renner et Cie, en Russie par Plékhanov et Cie, en Belgique par Vandervelde et Cie, en Grande-Bretagne par Macdonald et Cie, en Italie par Mussolini... tout seul.

Se il rifiuto del compromesso a priori non è un argomento marxista, e non è per nulla argomento, lo sono però in Lenin ad ogni passo lo stadio di sviluppo tecnico ed economico, il diffondersi sul mondo dell'imperialismo, lo smascherarsi della "democrazia in generale" come "dittatura della borghesia", le differenze insuperabili ed irreversibili tra il mondo della Prima Guerra Mondiale, e quello delle rivoluzioni di sistemazione borghese parallele alle guerre di sistemazione nazionale.

Von einem Richard Müller wissen zumeist nur noch Fachhistoriker, daß er in der Novemberrevolution von 1918 eine zentrale Rolle spielte: Richard Louis Müller (1880–1943) war als Leiter der »Revolutionären Obleute« wesentlich an der Vorbereitung des 9. November beteiligt. Im Deutschen Metallarbeiter-Verband, seinerzeit der größten Gewerkschaft der Welt, galt Richard Müller als der Anführer des linken Flügels. Schon die großen Berliner Massenstreiks der Jahre 1916 bis 1918 hatte er illegal organisiert.
In der Revolutionsregierung von 1918 war Müller Vorsitzender des »Vollzugsrates der Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte«, also der Kopf des ranghöchsten Räteorgans. Formal war Richard Müller damit sogar das Staatsoberhaupt der »Deutschen Sozialistischen Republik« – einer Republik, die allerdings nur einige Monate unter diesem Titel firmierte und heute als Weimarer Republik« in den Geschichtsbüchern verzeichnet ist.
Müllers Einfluß in Berlin überstieg 1918 bei weitem den von Karl Liebknecht, der über Müller scharf fluchen konnte, wenn er und die Spartakusgruppe sich wieder einmal in eine Nebenrolle verwiesen sahen. Das Kräfteverhältnis zwischen den Revolutionären Obleuten und der Nach-Liebknecht-KPD sollte sich freilich drehen. Unabhängiger Sozialismus und Rätesystem, jene Prinzipien, die Richard Müller vertrat, wurden zwischen den Mühlsteinen von Sozialdemokratie und Marxismus-Leninismus zermahlen.
Anders als Liebknecht geriet deshalb Müller, obwohl er diesen überlebte und die entscheidenden Gründerjahre der Weimarer Republik mitgestaltete, in der breiten Öffentlichkeit in Vergessenheit. Trotzdem beeinflusst Müller bis heute noch das Denken der Historiker. Seine dreibändige Revolutionsgeschichte mit dem Obertitel »Vom Kaiserreich zur Republik«, in den Jahren 1924 und 1925 erschienen, bildet die wichtigste zeitgenössische Revolutionsdarstellung aus marxistischer Sicht. In den sechziger Jahren wurden diese Werke wiederentdeckt. Müllers Schriften beeinflussten in Form unzähliger Raubdrucke zuerst das Geschichtsbild der Studierendenbewegung, bevor sie ab 1974 auch mehrere »offizielle « Neuauflagen erlebten. Seine mitreißend geschriebene, von zahlreichen Originalquellen gestützte Trilogie fehlt auch heute in keiner Literaturliste zur Novemberrevolution und ist unentbehrliche Stütze vieler aktueller Darstellungen dieser Zeit.
Dennoch wusste man bisher kaum etwas über die Herkunft und den Werdegang ihres Autors. Diese Lücke wird mit der vorliegenden Arbeit geschlossen. Ralf Hoffrogge verfolgt Müllers Lebensweg von der Kindheit in der Thüringischen Provinz über die politische Karriere in Berlin bis zum Rückzug ins Privatleben in den dreißiger Jahren. Zahlreiche, auch in der Forschung bisher unbekannte Details zu Müllers Leben fügen sich hier erstmals zu einem Gesamtbild dieser historischen Persönlichkeit.

During the January Rising in Berlin in 1919, the Communist leader Rosa Luxemburg wrote to the widow of socialist newspaper editor Wolfgang Fernbach- recently murdered by right-wing freikorps: ‘I press your hand in your grief. I have seen so many of my friends fall right and left at my side. This is the fate of the revolutionary fighter. I have now only one wish, also to meet my death in our cause. I press your hand and know you will be courageous'. Two months earlier, she had written to her friends Marie and Adolf Geck on the loss of their son on the Western Front, ‘I am only comforted by the grim thought that I too will soon be sent to meet my Maker – perhaps by a bullet of the counter-revolution, which is lurking on all sides’. On 15 January 1919, Luxemburg and her comrade Karl Liebknecht were themselves arrested by freikorps and were brutally murdered, instantly becoming symbols and martyrs of the German left. Her successor as Communist Party (KPD) leader, Leo Jogiches, told comrades that he would not flee Berlin as ‘someone must remain, at least to write our obituaries’.

The KPD, which was founded on 31 December 1918- 1 January 1919, was born in bloodshed and had no shortage of men and women willing to give their lives for ‘the cause’. This conviction and sacrifice was both encouraged and commemorated throughout the life of the party, and beyond. In the Revolution of 1918/19, the years of resistance to the Nazis, the Spanish Civil War, Stalinist purges and later in the German Democratic Republic, German Communists willingly gave their lives for the movement and were praised and remembered for doing so.

The origins of the concept of the ‘honourable death’ pre-date 1918, but the specific Communist Party culture and attitudes were shaped by the experiences of left-wing socialists during the First World War and, more importantly, during the German Revolution of 1918/19 and January Rising of 1919. The paper explores how the concept of ‘an honourable death’- exemplified by the deaths of Luxemburg and Liebknecht- developed and how it later shaped the actions, ideology and (sometimes suicidal) policies of the German Communist Party.

The GDR was a totally new State in 1949, it had to create for itself a past and a history. For this purpose, leaders and historians used the myth of the actors of the Revolution of January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Their death during a evolutionary act conferred to them the status of heroes in the mythology of the GDR. Due to the use of Marxist rhetoric, this glorification is similar to a secular hagiography. Meanwhile, even if they are glorified
as a couple, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are treated differently from the East German historiographic perspective. Rosa Luxemburg did not have the same status due to ideological factors – namely her opposition to Lenin – and also to her female condition. On the contrary, Karl Liebknecht was considered an active and key player in the “November Revolution”. As this event
was considered the symbolic act of the birth of the GDR, he was thus also considered the symbolic father of the East German State.