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Rosa Luxemburg

On 31st May 1919 a body was fished out of the Landwehrkanal in Berlin. It was quickly clear that it was the missing Rosa Luxemburg. It was also clear that she had been murdered: and that the motive was political. All her life Rosa Luxemburg fought for the rights of the international working class. Rosa Luxemburg was born on 5th March 1871 as Rozalia Luxenburg in Zamość in the then Russian part of Poland. She died on 15th January 1919 in Berlin.

Rosa Luxemburg, Portrait, circa 1905.

picture-alliance / akg-images 691288

Important works by Rosa Luxemburg:

1897 “The Industrial Development of Poland”
(Dissertation at the University of Zurich), Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898

1899 “Reform or Revolution?”
(First published in the “Leipziger Volkszeitung”, No. 219–225, 21.–28. September 1898, and No. 76–80, 4.–8. April 1899. Rosa Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke, Bd.1, Erster Halbbd., Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1982, pp 369–445.)

1913 “The Accumulation of Capital.”
(Originally published: Buchhandlung Vorwärts Paul Singer GmbH., Berlin 1913. Rosa Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 5, Berlin/DDR 1975, pp 5–411.

1916 “The Crisi of Social Democracy”
(under the pseudonym “Junius”, Verlag Union, Zürich 1916)

1918 “The Russian Revolution”
(First published 1922 by Paul Levi based on a hand-written manuscript from the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 4 (6. überarbeitete Auflage), Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2000, pp. 332–362)

1916 “Introduction to the National Economy”
(Verlag Laub, Berlin 1925)

Rosa Luxemburg’s most famous saying:

“Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently.”

Adam Gusowski, June 2014