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EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT.
Biography
The son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the founders of the SPD, Karl Liebknecht trained to be a lawyer and defended many Social Democrats in political trials. He was also a leading figure in the socialist youth movement and thus became a leading figure in the struggle against militarism.
As a deputy in the Reichstag he was one of the first SPD representatives to break party discipline and vote against war credits in December 1914. He became a figurehead for the struggle against the war. His opposition was so successful that his parliamentary immunity was removed and he was improsoned.
Freed by the November revolution he immediately threw himself into the struggle and became with Rosa Luxemburg one of the founders of the new Communist Party (KPD). Along with Luxemburg he was murdered by military officers with the tacit approval of the leaders of the SPD after the suppression of the so-called “Spartacist Uprising” in January 1919.
**********Liebknecht's May Day Manifesto
THIS May Day Manifesto called the people of Berlin to the May Day Demonstration of 1916. He was sentenced to jail for expressions in this May Day Speech.
"Poverty and misery, need and starvation, are ruling in Germany, Belgium, Poland and Servia, whose blood the vampire of imperialism is sucking and which resemble vast cemeteries. The entire world, the much-praised European civilization, is falling into ruins through the anarchy which has been let loose by the world war.
"Those who profit from the war want war with the United States. To-morrow, perhaps, they may order us to aim lethal weapons against new groups of brethren, against our fellow-workers in the United States, and fight America, too. Consider well this fact: As long as the German people does not arise and use force directed by its own will, the assassination of the people will continue. Let thousands of voices shout 'Down with the shameless extermination of nations! Down with those responsible for these crimes!' Our enemy is not the English, French, nor Russian people, but the great German landed proprietors, the German capitalists and their executive committee.
"Forward, let us fight the government; let us fight these mortal enemies of all freedom. Let us fight for everything which means the future triumph of the working-classes, the future of humanity and civilization.
"Workers, comrades, and you, women of the people, let not this festival of May, the second during the war, pass without protest against the Imperialist Slaughter. On the first of May let millions of voices cry, 'Down with the shameful crime of the extermination of peoples! Down with those responsible for the War!' "
Liebknecht's May Day, 1916, Speech
Delivered at the Potsdamerplatz, Berlin, May 1, 1916
(Report by one present at the demonstration)BERLIN, May 1. Very early in the morning, with three other comrades, I reached Hortensienstrasse, where Comrade Liebknecht lives. We enter No. 14, climb up the stairs, ring his bell. Comrade Liebknecht opens the door himself. He is thin, his hair looks unusually black and his face is deathly pale. He walks like a dead man, walking with grim steps. He leaves us and soon returns with his wife; she is a Russian. She nods welcome to us all. Suddenly a terrible fear comes to me. No one has spoken a word, yet we all feel that we are in the presence of a supreme moment. From Comrade Liebknecht's grim silence we judge that he is about to hurl prudence to the four winds and defy the Government.
He hands out, one to each of us, a copy of the speech which he will deliver. So far not one word has been spoken. While we are hurriedly reading his speech, which is to be delivered within a few hours, he remarks, "I have several thousand of these printed."
We have finished reading the prospectus which will make history and send him to prison. Then we go into conference. We have been with him just an hour. We leave him.
Shortly after 2 P.M. of the same May day, I have taken a hasty lunch at the Central Hotel. As I near the door I hear the footsteps of the great multitudes. As far as I can see, all the streets and side streets are full of surging, silently moving human beings; all moving in the direction where the May Day demonstration is to take place. These are men and women, mostly women. The men among them are mostly over fifty. Suddenly it becomes apparent to me that there are more children in the crowds than men and women together. As they march I notice that I cannot see one in the crowd who has a smile on her or his face. Along the route no one is cheering them. I had never seen such immense crowds in the streets of Berlin. Not even during the Agadir crisis had the streets of Berlin held such multitudes. The crowds move as though they are part of a funeral procession. They are all sad, very sad. I recognize a group of comrades in the crowd. I rush in and join them. Mund halten (keep your mouth shut) is the unwritten rule, and every one seems to observe it strictly.
Some one has turned the head of the procession into Unter den Linden. We do not know why; very few of us have noticed it, anyhow. We suddenly see a platoon of mounted guards dashing through the crowd, but they are riding on the sidewalk. The part of the procession that had been marching on the sidewalk rushes to the middle of the street in order to escape being trampled upon by the mounted guards. Another group of mounted guards rides past hurriedly, and still another follows. The people in the procession all about me do not seem to notice them. Not even a whisper one hears. On reaching the palace grounds I see in the distance five persons. From their elbows up they tower over the heads of the multitude surrounding them. I leave my friends and elbow my way through the thick crowd. I explain my impolite advance on the ground that I am a reporter on a party (Socialist) paper. I finally reach the spot where Comrade Liebknecht and other comrades are standing. The crowds are close where they are standing, and I cannot make out whether they are standing on a raised platform or in a motor car. I am about twenty or twenty-five feet from the doctor.
Suddenly one of the comrades near Dr. Liebknecht raises his hand and at once proceeds to speak. The multitude is anxious to hear him. Every one is sounding "Hush" in order to obtain silence and thus making more noise. Dr. Liebknecht uncovers his head; some one near by offers to relieve him of his hat. Deathly silence reigns all about the grounds. The interior of a cathedral cannot be more silent. The doctor begins: "Comrades and friends." They start to cheer him. He holds up his hand forbiddingly, then he resumes: "Some years ago a witty Socialist observed that in Prussia we Germans have three cardinal rights, which are: we can be soldiers, we can pay taxes and we can keep our tongues between our teeth. The Socialist who made this observation made it with a grim humor, but to-day the humor of it must be disconnected from it – it is all too grim. Especially in these days this observation is too true. To-day we are sharing these three great Prussian State privileges in full. Every German citizen is given the full privilege to carry a rifle in any manner. Even the Boy Scout has been incited to play the ridiculous role of a soldier. They have thus planted the spirit of hate deep in his youthful soul. Meanwhile the old Landsturmer is forced to perform forced labor in invaded countries, in spite of the fact that under the laws of the Imperial Constitution he cannot be called out for any other purpose than for the defense of the Fatherland.
"As for his second privilege – his right to pay taxes – in this respect the German citizen is, up to the present time, far ahead of his brothers in foreign lands whom he is engaged in exterminating. And yet more privileges of this kind are awaiting him in the days to come – after the end of the war. The high taxes which the German people have so far paid are insignificant compared to the great burdens which they must carry after the war, and for which their masters are daily preparing them with such touching delicacy of patriotic sentiment through the medium of the official press.
"The new Germany has the unquestionable right to hold its tongue between its teeth. Recently our official press has been flooded by authoritative and pharisaic exhortations to soldiers' wives that they must, for God's sake, not complain so much about the scarcity of food. Keep your mouth shut tight when hungry. Keep your mouth shut tight when your children are hungry, keep your mouth shut when your children want milk, keep your mouth shut when your children cry for bread, keep your mouth shut and write no letters to the front."
Outside of Germany these phrases might sound like the stock phrases of a professional agitator, but not so in Germany, at least not in those days. I carefully watched for the effect of these remarks all about me, and I saw no dry eyes.
Amid tense silence the doctor continued: "In a recent issue the mouthpiece of the Pharisees, the "Muenchener Neueste Nachrichten," complains thus (reading from a clipping)
" 'Our soldiers do not always receive from their dear ones at home the best encouragement to hold on. A soldier on furlough who, before obtaining leave, had performed for his Fatherland unflinchingly, went through many hardships with good humor, but after a visit home returned to the front with a sad face, worrying day and night about his dear ones and the pretended scarcity at home.'
" 'Pretended' scarcity certainly is palatable, especially when one is reminded of the fact that our police is weighing the bread, that butter is out of the market, that fat, meat and margarine have reached a price that is beyond the probable reach of the workingman!
"Another well-nourished Pharisee exhorts in the columns of the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung by asking, 'Where is scarcity to be found?' and no doubt after having partaken of a good dinner he preaches with these words: 'We must teach ourselves at home how to manage to get along in our homes with as little as possible. But of course in large families with children the small earnings of the breadwinner being now totally absent, this sum must be replaced by the creation of a relief fund so that there may not be any serious want.' Exactly, but under no circumstances must the people complain of hunger. It annoys the soldier terribly and cripples his fighting power. Therefore do not write complaining letters to the front. In other words, you wives of soldiers, hide the truth from your husbands; in fact, lie to them. "The old proverb says, `The mouth speaketh out of the fullness of the heart,' and if her children's stomach is empty it is hard for the wife not to mention to her far-away soldier husband that it is hard to provide for his children with food while he is offering his life for his country. But if it is not found possible for your masters to prevail upon you to 'keep your tongue between your teeth,' then they resort to a more practical means. They have a very simple means of stopping these annoying complaints. The Prussian censor is now supervising these letters of wives at home to their husbands at the front. They simply do not allow this objectionable correspondence to go through. Poor and unfortunate German soldier! He deserves pity! At the command of the militarist Government he has gone into the enemy country, and at the command of the Government he must steal from other nations. He is required to perform difficult services. The sufferings that he endures are past description. About him everywhere shells and bombs sow death and destruction. His wife and children at home are suffering want and hardship; she looks about her and finds her children crying for bread. She is desperate, but she must not appeal or complain to any one. She must hold her tongue and suffer inwardly. But how can she silence her children? She must not even share the sympathy of her husband at the front, because that cripples her soldier husband's fighting powers. Her soldier husband must `hold on' and 'steal' in the land of her neighbors. He must hold on and 'suffer' because the capitalists, the hurrah patriots and the armor-plate kings have willed it so. Every one must keep his or her tongue between the teeth, for the war profiteers must make money out of the want and misery of the wives and their husband soldiers at the front.
"By a lie the German workingman was forced into the war, and by like lies they expect to induce him to go on with war!" A mighty shout went up from a thousand throats – "Hurrah for Liebknecht." Liebknecht raised his hand for silence. Then steadily, though knowing the cost, he said: "Do not shout for me, shout rather 'We will have no more war. We will have peace – now!' "
Scarcely had he finished speaking when, as if by magic, a tremendous tumult arose. Near the spot where the doctor and his friends had been standing the crowds surged back and forth. The great multitudes in the palace grounds had the appearance of an immense sea whose surface was every inch covered with human heads, those of men and women. The children became terrified. The shouts of the grown-ups and the terrified shrieks of the children added vehemence to the scene. The next moment I see Comrade Liebknecht pulled down from the stand. His friends also follow. Then I see fists raised. I suddenly discover that the jostling of the crowds about me has carried me further away from the spot where a riot is in progress. I again elbow my way toward where the doctor and his companions have been pulled down from the stand. I had made some progress when suddenly I find myself being swept backward by a huge human wave.
In spite of my wish to see what is going on behind me I am being carried away further and further. Several hundred thousand panic-stricken souls are rushing towards the streets and avenues that lead to the grounds. The scene is frightful. Every one is shouting. I steal a glimpse of the spot which is now the center of the sudden panic. I gasp with fright. I see numberless mounted soldiers with large black whips in their hands lashing the crowds. Their mounts are so close to the struggling and frightened men and women, yea, even children, that it is a miracle that thousands are not pinned to the ground. I cannot tell whether they are killed or whether they fainted. But there are many of them. I myself was forced to step over several persons. I tried to lift up a body, but in the next moment I was carried away. . . .
May Day evening. Twenty-five or thirty meet secretly at the home of a comrade in ---------- street. We all know what the report is. Herr Doctor is arrested. We are all sad, very sad. We have met to exchange views as to what step to take next. Every one is laboring with heavy thoughts within himself. The silence is sickening. With the exception of four the men who come together to exchange views are all soldiers in the active army. Not all of them are privates. We have spent the entire night, sometimes in heavy silence and again in deliberation. It is decided that we ---------- ---------- ----------. Are the German workingmen thinking? Their present thoughts are tragic. They hurt.
Liebknecht's Reply to his Judges
WHILE in prison Dr. Liebknecht sent two letters to the military court handling his case, in which he explained his position. It was Dr. Liebknecht's hope that these letters would be read to the Reichstag and in that way reach the German people. But this was not the case. The letters were put before the Parliamentary Committee, which investigated Liebknecht's case and on whose recommendation the Reichstag, by a vote of 229 to 111, refused to ask for his release. A copy of one of these letters was smuggled out of prison and sent out of Germany.
Berlin, May 3rd, 1916.
To the Royal Military Court, Berlin:
In the investigation of the case against me, the records of remarks need the following elucidation:I. The German Government is in its social and historical character an instrument for the crushing down and exploitation of the laboring classes; at home and abroad it serves the interests of junkerism, of capitalism, and of imperialism.
The German Government is a reckless champion of expansion in world politics, the most ardent promoter in the competition of armaments, and accordingly one of the most powerful influences in developing the causes of the present war.
In partnership with the Austrian Government the German Government contrived to bring about this war and so burdened itself with the greatest responsibility for the immediate outbreak of the war.
The German Government started the war under cover of deception practiced upon the common people and even upon the Reichstag (compare, among other things, the concealment of the ultimatum to Belgium, the make-up of the German White Book, the elimination of the Czar's dispatch of July 29, 1914) , and it tries by reprehensible means to keep up the war spirit among the people.
It carries on the war with methods that, judged even by standards hitherto conventional, are monstrous. The invasion of Belgium and Luxemburg, poisonous gases, which in the meantime have become of common use by all the belligerents, and then. look at the Zeppelin bombs, which outdo everything and which are intended to kill all that live, combatants or non-combatants, within a wide region; submarine commerce warfare; the torpedoing of the Lusitania, etc.; the system of hostages and forced contributions at the beginning, especially in Belgium; the systematic entrapping of Ukrainian, Georgian, Baltic Provincials, Polish, Irish, Mohammedan, and other prisoners of war in the German prison camps for the purpose of having them do treasonable war service and treasonable spying for the Central Powers; Under-Secretary Zimmerman's agreement with Sir Roger Casement in December, 1914, regarding the organization, equipment, and training in the German prison camps of the "Irish Brigade," composed of captured British soldiers; the attempts by means of threats of forcible interment to compel Christians of a hostile nationality found in Germany to do treasonable war service against their countries, and so forth. (Necessity knows no law!)
The German Government has, through the establishment of martial law, enormously increased the political lawlessness and economic exploitations of the people; it refuses all serious political and social reforms, while at the same time it tries to hold the people docile for the imperialistic war policy, by means of rhetorical phrases about equal rights accorded to all parties, about alleged discontinuation of discriminations in social and political matters, about an alleged readjustment and new direction of political matters, and so on.
The German Government because of its consideration for agrarian and capitalists' interests has completely failed to care for the economic welfare of the people during the war, to guard against misery and the practice of revolting extortion upon the people.
The German Government is still holding fast to its war aims and so constitutes the chief obstacle in the way of immediate peace negotiations upon the basis of renunciation of annexations and oppressions of all sorts: Through the maintenance – in itself illegal – of martial law (censorship, etc.) it prevents the public from learning unpleasant facts and prevents Socialist criticism of its measures. The German Government thereby reveals its system of seeming legality and sham popularity as a system of actual force, of genuine hostility to the people and bad faith as regards the masses.
The cry of "Down with the Government!" is meant to brand this entire policy of the Government as fatal to the masses of the people.
This cry also indicates that it is the duty of every representative of the welfare of the proletariat to wage a struggle of the most strenuous character – the class struggle – against the Government.
II. The present war is not a war for the defense of the national integrity, not for the liberation of oppressed peoples, not for the welfare of the masses.
From the standpoint of the proletariat this war only signifies the most extreme concentration and extension of political suppression, of economic exploitation, and of military slaughtering of the working-class body and soul for the benefit of capitalism and of absolutism.
To all this the working-class of all countries can give but one answer: a harder struggle, the international class struggle against the capitalist Governments and the ruling classes of all countries for the abolition of all oppression and exploitation by the institution of a peace conceived in the Socialist spirit. In this class struggle the Socialist, whose Fatherland is the International, finds included the defense of everything that he, as a Socialist, is bound to defend. The cry of "Down with war" signifies that I thoroughly condemn and oppose the present war because of its historical nature, because of its general social causes and specific way in which it originated (developed), and because of the way it is being carried on and the objects for which it is being waged. That cry signifies that it is the duty of every representative of proletarian interests to take part in the international class struggle for the purpose of ending the war.
III. As a Socialist I am fundamentally opposed to the existing military system as well as of this war, and I always supported with all my power the fight against Militarism as an especially important task and a matter of life and death for the working-class of all countries. (Compare my book "Militarism & Anti-Militarism" and my reports to the International Young People's Conferences at Stuttgart, 1907, and Copenhagen, 1910.) The war demands that we carry on the struggle against Militarism with redoubled energy.
IV. Since 1889 May 1st has been consecrated to manifestations and propaganda in favor of the great basic principles of Socialism, against all exploitation, oppression, and violence; dedicated to propaganda for the solidarity of workers of all countries – a solidarity which the war has not abolished, but strengthened – against the workers' fratricidal strife, for peace and against war.
During the war the manifestation and propaganda of these principles is a doubly sacred duty imposed upon every Socialist.
V. The policy advocated by me was outlined in the resolution adopted by the International Socialist Congress held in Stuttgart (1907), which pledged Socialists of all countries – after they should have failed to prevent a war – to work with all their energies towards its quick ending, and to take advantage of the conditions created by the war for hastening the abolition of the capitalist order of society.
This Socialist policy is meant to be international, even in its ultimate consequences. It imposes upon the Socialists of other countries the same obligation with reference to their Governments and ruling classes that I with others in Germany followed against the Government and ruling classes of Germany.
This Socialist policy has an international effect, by spreading reciprocal encouragement from nation to nation; it promotes the international class struggle against war.
Since the beginning of the war I, together with others, have defended in every possible way and upheld in the most public manner this Socialist policy, and besides, so far as possible, have entered into connections with those who shared my sentiments in other countries.
(I may mention, for example, my journey to Belgium and Holland in September, 1914; my Christmas letter in 1914 to the Labor Leader; the International Socialist Meetings in Switzerland, in which, I regret to say, I was unable to participate personally, being prevented by superior powers, etc.)
VI. This policy to which, cost it what it may, I shall hold fast, is not mine alone, but it is also the policy of an ever-increasing proportion of the people in Germany and of the other belligerent and neutral States. It will soon become, as I hope – and to this end I am resolved to toil on – the policy of the working-class of all countries, which will then possess the power to break the imperialistic will of the ruling classes, and to shape as may seem best the mutual relations and conditions of the people for the benefit of all mankind.
KARL LIEBKNECHT,
Armierungssoldat.
Armierungssoldat.
Liebknecht's Trial and Release
ON June 28th, 1916, Karl Liebknecht was sentenced at secret trial to thirty months' penal servitude. When the public prosecutor asked for this secrecy, Liebknecht exclaimed:
"It is cowardice on your part, gentlemen. Yes, I repeat, that you are cowards if you close these doors."Nevertheless, the court decided to exclude the public, upon which Liebknecht cried to his wife and Rosa Luxemburg, in the audience, "Leave this comedy, where everything, including even the decision, has been prepared beforehand."
Following the announcement of the sentence given Liebknecht, the Potsdamerplatz in Berlin was the scene of a serious outbreak.
The next day (according to reports from Switzerland) strikes of protest against the Liebknecht case took place in Berlin and some 55,000 persons were involved in them. In other cities strikes and demonstrations of protest also took place.
An appeal was taken but resulted only in an increase in the sentence to four years' and one month's imprisonment at hard labor. Furthermore, he was deprived of all his civil rights for a period of six years after he should have served his term.
[Associated Press Dispatch]
PARIS, October 25. – An enormous crowd assembled before the Reichstag building in Berlin yesterday, calling for the abdication of Emperor William and the formation of a republic, according to a special dispatch from Zurich to L'Information.
Dr. Karl Liebknecht, the Socialist leader who has just been released from prison, was applauded frantically. He was compelled to enter a carriage filled with flowers from which he made a speech declaring that the time of the people had arrived.
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