Luxemburg, Rosa (1870–1919)

Abstract

Rosa Luxemburg was born on 5 March 1870 in Zamosc (Polish territory under the Russian occupation), and died, murdered during the revolution, on 15 January 1919 in Berlin. Rosa Luxemburg was a socialist thinker and writer, one of the leaders of Polish and German Social Democracy, and an economist. She studied in Zurich, first philosophy and natural sciences (for two years), then she graduated from the Faculty of Law and Economics. In 1897 she received her PhD for a book Die industrielle Entwicklung Polens (The Industrial Development of Poland) (1898). In 1898 she contracted a marriage of convenience (with G. Luebeck) to obtain German citizenship and from then, until the end of her life, she lived in Berlin. She was one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party in the Kingdom of Poland (under the Russian occupation). The main area of her activity was German Social Democracy, in which she became one of the leading intellectuals. Her articles in which she opposed the revisionism of Eduard Bernstein and defended revolutionary Marxism won her European popularity. (They were subsequently published in a book Sozialreform oder Revolution? [1900].)