EARLY YEARS
Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht was born in Leipzig on August 13, 1871. He was the son of Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht and his second wife Natalie (née Reh), who also came from a family with a strong political background. Her father Theodor was a member of the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848. Karl’s parents were second cousins, as his maternal great-grandmother was the sister of one of his paternal great-grandfathers.
His father was a co-founder with August Bebel of the Marxist Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Liebknecht became an exponent of Marxist ideas while studying law and political economy in Leipzig and Humboldt University of Berlin.
From 1893 to 1894, Liebknecht served with the Imperial Pioneer Guards in Potsdam. After four-year internships in Arnsberg and Paderborn, he earned his doctorate at Würzburg in 1897. Two years later, Liebknecht moved to Berlin where he opened a law office with his brother Theodor and another partner, Oskar Cohn.
On May 8, 1900, Karl Liebknecht married Julia Paradies. The couple had three children: two sons and a daughter. Sadly, Julia passed away in 1911.
THE POLITICIAN
As a lawyer, Liebknecht often defended other left-wing socialists who were tried for offenses… such as smuggling socialist propaganda into Russia (a task in which he was also involved). He became a member of the SPD in 1900 and was president of the Socialist Youth International from 1907 to 1910.
Liebknecht also wrote extensively against militarism. In his speech at the Bremen party conference in 1904, he insisted to his audience:
“Militarism is our most deadly enemy and the best way of waging the struggle against it is to increase the number of social democrats among the soldiers.”
One of Liebknecht’s papers entitled Militarismus und Antimilitarismus (Militarism and Antimilitarism) led to him being arrested in 1907. He was jailed for eighteen months in Glatz, located in Prussian Silesia. The next year (while still in prison), Liebknecht was elected to the Prussian parliament.
He was an active member of the Second International and a founder of the Socialist Youth International. In 1912, Liebknecht was elected to the Reichstag as a Social Democrat (a member of the SPD’s left-wing). In October of that year, he married his second wife, art historian Sophie Ryss.
THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
Liebknecht opposed Germany’s entry in the First World War, but in order not to infringe the party’s unity, he abstained from the war loans vote on August 4, 1914. Four months later (December 2nd), Liebknecht was the only member of the Reichstag to vote against further loans, the supporters of which included 110 of his own party members. He continued to be a major critic of the Social Democratic leadership (under Karl Kautsky) and its decision to acquiesce in going to war.
At the end of the year, Liebknecht (together with Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi, Ernest Meyer, Franz Mehring and Clara Zetkin) formed the so-called Spartacus League (Spartakusbund). This league publicized its views in a newspaper titled Spartakusbriefe (Spartacus Letters), which was soon declared illegal. Liebknecht was arrested and sent to the Eastern Front, despite his immunity as a member of the Reichstag. Refusing to fight, Liebknecht served burying the dead. Due to his rapidly deteriorating health, he was allowed to return to Germany in October 1915.
Seven months later, Liebknecht was arrested again following a demonstration against the war in Berlin. The protest was organized by the Spartacus League, and he was sentenced to two and a half years in jail for high treason, which was later increased to four years and one month. By this time, Liebknecht had left the SPD.
REVOLUTION AND DEATH
Yet again, Karl Liebknecht was released from prison in October 1918. This was made possible when the new German chancellor, Prince Maximilian of Baden, granted amnesty to all political prisoners. Upon his return to Berlin on October 23rd, Liebknecht was escorted to the Soviet Embassy by a crowd of workers.
Following the outbreak of the German Revolution, Liebknecht carried on his activities in the Spartacist League. Along with Luxemburg, he resumed leadership of the group and published its party organ, Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag). On November 9th, Liebknecht declared the formation of a Freie Sozialistische Republik (Free Socialist Republic) from a balcony of the Berliner Stadtschloss:
“The day of the revolution has come. We have enforced peace. Peace has been concluded in this moment. The old has gone. The rule of the Hohenzollern, who have resided in this palace for centuries, is over. In this very hour we proclaim the Free Socialist Republic of Germany. We greet our Russian brethren, which have been ignominously chased out four days ago … The day of liberty has begun. Never again a Hohenzollern will enter this place. Seventy years ago at this place Friedrich Wilhelm IV was standing, and he had to take off his cap to honour the fifty corpses, covered with blood, of those who died fighting at the barricades in the defense of the cause of liberty. Another defile passes here today. It is the spirits of the millions who have given their lives for the sacred cause of the proletariat. With a split skull, soaked in blood these victims of the rule of force totter along, followed by the spirits of millions of women and children who were depraved in the cause of the proletariat. And further millions of blood-victims of this very world war follow them. Today an incalculable mass of inspired proletarians stands at this very place, to pay homage to the liberty newly gained. Party comrades, I proclaim the Free Socialist Republic of Germany, which shall include all tribes, where there are no more servants, where every honest worker will receive his honest pay. The rule of capitalism, which has turned Europe into a cemetery, is broken … We have to collect all our force to establish a government of workers and soldiers, to create a new stately order of the proletariat, an order of peace, of fortune, of liberty of our German brethren and of our brethren all over the world. We stretch out our hands to them and call on them to complete the world revolution.”
– Karl Liebknecht (Spartakusbund)
Proclamation of the Free Socialist Republic, November 9, 1918
His speech came two hours after Philipp Scheidemann’s declaration of a German Republic from a balcony of the Reichstag.
On December 31, 1918 and January 1, 1919, Liebknecht was involved in the founding of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Together with Luxemburg, Jogiches, and Zetkin, Liebknecht was also instrumental in the Spartacist uprising in Berlin later that month. Initially, he and Luxemburg opposed the revolt, but they joined it after it had begun. The uprising was brutally opposed by the new German government under President Friedrich Ebert, who was aided by remnants of the Imperial German Army and the new Freikorps militias.
By January 13th, the uprising had been extinguished. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were captured by Freikorps troops two days later. They were brought to the Eden Hotel in Berlin, where they were tortured and interrogated for several hours. Then, Luxemburg was beaten with rifle butts and shot. Her corpse thrown into the Landwehr Canal… while Liebknecht was forced to step out of the car in which he was being transported. Then, he was shot in the back.
Official declarations said Liebknecht had been shot in an attempt to escape. Although the circumstances were disputed by the perpetrators at the time, the Freikorps commander, Captain Waldemar Pabst, later claimed: “I had them executed.”
LEGACY: A LEFTIST MARTYR
Clara Zetkin penned an obituary for Liebknecht in September 1919. Together with Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht became a celebrated martyr of the German left. The artist Käthe Kollwitz depicted his lying in state in the work Memorial for Karl Liebknecht. In 1930, the Soviet government renamed a village near Kursk in central Russia after him: Imeni Karla Libknekhta.
Since 1919, an annual Liebknecht-Luxemburg Demonstration has been held in Berlin, the world’s largest funerary parade and the biggest meeting of the German left. The annual L-L Demo is held on the second Sunday in January to the present day, and 14,000 people attended the rally in honor of the duo in 2016.