Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919,) fully Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht, was a German socialist, barrister, politician, and revolutionary. Along with Rosa Luxemburg and other radicals, Liebknecht organized the underground group Spartakusbund (Spartacus League,) which evolved into the Communist Party of Germany, committed to a socialist revolution. Liebknecht was fatally shot in the Spartacus Revolt of January 1919.
Born in Leipzig, Kingdom of Saxony, Liebknecht was the son of German socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900,) who founded the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD.) Karl Liebknecht studied law and political economy at Leipzig and Berlin, earning his doctorate. He proposed to dedicate his career to the defense of Marxism.
Liebknecht was a member of the Reichstag 1912–16. During World War l, he was imprisoned as an independent, anti-militarist, social democrat. He was a founder-member with Rosa Luxemburg of the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1918. Liebknecht led an unsuccessful ‘Spartacus Rising’ in Berlin in January 1919. He and Luxemburg were shot to death by counterrevolutionary volunteers.
German historian Helmut Trotnow wrote Karl Liebknecht: A Political Biography (1984.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Karl Liebknecht
The enemy is at home.
—Karl Liebknecht
At the crash of economic collapse of which the rumblings can already be heard, the sleeping soldiers of the proletariat will awake as at the fanfare of the Last Judgment and the corpses of the victims of the struggle will arise and demand an accounting from those who are loaded down with curses.
—Karl Liebknecht
Topics: Revolutionaries, Revolutions, Revolution
Just as invasion is the true and tried weapon in the hands of capital against the class struggle, so on the other hand the fearless pursuit of the class struggle has always proven the most effective preventative of foreign invasions
—Karl Liebknecht
Topics: Weapon
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