Rosa Luxemburg was born May 5th, 1871, in a small town in Poland. In spite of the poverty of her parents there was a desire for and an appreciation of intellectual attainments. Her mother, especially, of whom Rosa always spoke and wrote with such tenderness, seems to have maintained a high standard for the family. The language of the household was not Yiddish, but Polish. The books the family read were not the Talmud, but the classics.
Rosa entered the Girls' High School in Warsaw at an unusually early age. She graduated at fifteen, with the highest honours and would have received the gold medal had it not been that already she was suspected of political tendencies inimical to the government of the "little father" in St. Petersburg. For three years after her graduation she devoted herself to literature, belles lettres, in a circle of friends more liberal than revolutionary, although sufficiently revolutionary to bring down upon themselves the attention of the vigilant police of the Czar. At the age of eighteen Rosa was compelled to leave Russian-Poland and flee to Zurich, that famous city-of-refuge of European political refugees. In Zurich she studied in the University, especially Mathematics and Natural Science.
Among her fellow students were a number of Polish and Russian exiles and their friends, and the family with whom she lived, brought her within the ranks of the revolutionists. It must have been a test of the spirit of the young woman. On the one hand, among her young friends, she had the zest of youth and its dreams of a nobler, finer, free world. On the other, in the house where she lived, she witnessed the effects of the struggle upon the souls, who had devoted themselves to the pursuit of this ideal. The Lubeck family were also exiles, from Germany, where the father had been a member of the Social Democratic party. He lay, now, helpless and ill, confined to his bed, unable even to write. His wife, the mother of a large family of children, had grown weary of the battle, longed only to free herself from the sordid weary round of her daily life, and was discontented, unhappy, impatient.
As if they had been her own people Rosa undertook to hold this group together. She wrote at the dictation of the father, helped the mother over her mental and spiritual struggles, gathered the children about her, and succeeded in bringing peace and serenity and new hope and spirit into the family. It was an excellent training for the work she was to do in future, in a larger field. But even now she was approaching Socialism, not from the angle of bound spirits seeking freedom, but from the scientific basis laid down, by Marx and Engels whom she read and studied during this period.
In the years between 1889 and 1892 she studied, now in Zurich, now in Berne, and again in Genoa, Socialism and History. During these years she met Plechanov and Axelrod, and drew about her and them a circle of Polish revolutionists, Karski, Leo Jogisches, and others, and sought to introduce the science of Marx into the political life of these youths. Up to this time the Polish rebels had found expression in terrorism alone, holding their organisation together by conspirative measures and plans. Their chief leader was Dazynski, who believed that a social revolution was possible for Poland only after it had become independent of Russia.
Up to this time there had been but one day in the year that might be called a day of freedom for the workers of Russia. It was the 1st of May, a day when workers might leave their places of employment and attend meetings or demonstrations or hold parades. Doubtless it was granted by the Czar's government all the more cheerfully because it indicated to the police the strength and fervour of the masses and brought forward new leaders and new objects for persecution. It was, however, greeted by the workers with special literary productions, and among these, on May 1st, 1892, was a brochure written by Rosa Luxemburg. It was not printed, however, because it was written, not in prose, but in hexameters.
This was the beginning of Rosa Luxemburg's real struggle. Up to this time she had only been in training.
In 1893 she was barred from the International Congress held in Zurich, on the charge that her organisation – the Polish Revolutionary Party – was one of spies and informers. Undaunted by this terrible blow she persisted in her efforts to base the Polish revolution on scientific Marxism, proclaiming ever her sincere conviction that Poland's hope and salvation lay only in a union of the working class of Poland with the working class of Russia and their combined struggle against the bourgeoisie.
In 1895 she went to Paris, studied Polish History in the National Library, and wrote two famous articles, published serially: The Industrial Development of Poland, and Social Patriotism in Poland. In 1896 she attended the International Congress in London. This was a victory that must have healed whatever wound remained after her Zurich experience three years before. In the autumn of that year, in order to obtain a standing in the German Social Democratic Party she entered college and by the 1st of May, 1897, she had attained the degree of L. L. D. The magna cum laude was not to be hers, although she had won it and it was recommended by her professors, because the faculty council decided "that is, for a woman, too much".
There remained another condition still unfulfilled. In order to live in Germany and work in the Social Democratic Party without being subject to banishment, she must become a German citizen. This was arranged by a formal, nominal, marriage to a son of the Lubeck family in Zurich, and, pausing only long enough to make the necessary arrangements for an immediate divorce, she left for Germany on the day of her marriage.
In the years immediately following, in agitation among the masses, in party activities, and especially in the crisis that followed upon the publication of Edward Bernstein's Problems of Socialism, she played on a larger stage the same role she had played in her student days in Zurich, supporting the weak and uncertain as she had held together the Lubeck family. A series of her articles, Social Reform or Revolution in the Leipzig Volkszeitung – a paper which she afterwards edited for a short time – not only cleared up the doubts and questions raised by Bernstein, but made her a factor to be reckoned with. In 1905, the year of the Russian revolution, she crystallised revolutionary thought in another series of articles – The Aim and Goal of the Proletariat in Revolution. Her solution to this was "the Dictatorship of the Proletariat".
In this same year she made a journey to Warsaw under an assumed name, was arrested and spent more than three months in prison. In the succeeding years she grew ever more and more impatient of opportunists, compromisers, and users of empty phrases. She was the brains and leader of the party school. She made enemies among the members of the party, by her uncompromising stand. There was even a motion to expel her from the ranks of the party.
Already, in 1910, the first clouds of the imperialist war were appearing on the horizon. The immediate threat of war began to submerge the minds of the masses; its problems to supersede those of theories and party tactics. Now all her energies were thrown into the struggle against militarism. She did not lose her grasp of Marxian science, even here. Her book on The Accumulation of Capital was written while she was travelling over Germany, speaking from platforms, proclaiming – "When we are ordered to shoot our French brothers we shall say, No, that we will not do".
One visions from a recital of the facts of her history a strong, a courageous, a fervent, but an eager impatient soul. The vision is true, but incomplete. She was also sensitive, tender, and – as these letters show – immeasurably gentle and considerate. Her iteration of the words "Be cheerful and serene" addressed to a friend who – despite grievous anxieties – was still enjoying that freedom from which Rosa herself was debarred; her rare plaints at the circumstances of her own fate, no less than the intimate revelations of her apprehension of beauty in all things; her keen and sensitive response to the smallest manifestations of Nature – all these combine to place this well rounded and well nigh complete nature and soul so high that one must bow reverently before it. Her cool, clear, scientific brain; the ardour of her courageous and daring spirit; and this almost ecstatic beauty-loving soul – what an ideal and what a model!
Not only because she was, in theory, in heart and soul, and in activity, an internationalist, but because she was a great spirit and a great soul, does Rosa Luxemburg belong to all the world. The Poland of her birth, the Germany of her later labours, hold her no more than Italy holds the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci or Greece holds Socrates. The soul that sets out upon the great search for truth, for beauty, and for freedom traverses the whole world – perchance the whole Universe – and belongs to all, even as it embraces all.
Not because she fell, a martyr in the struggle, but because she lived and fought and suffered and kept her courage and her spirit, does Rosa Luxemburg take her place among the heroes and heroines of life. Not only because she saw clearly and pointed the way, but because she visioned beauty and love along the way, does her figure stand as a guide post and an inspiration. The struggles of the working class are and must be bitter always, dark sometimes, hopeless appearing often, but now and then a gleam from the torch that Rosa Luxemburg carried so high must light the path for a moment, must bring new hope and new strength.
Last updated on: 5.4.2026