Rosa Luxemburg

Luxemburg was born in Russian Poland, took a doctorate in Zurich because German universities were closed to her, and became one of the sharpest economic theorists of the European left. She opposed the First World War from the first day and was imprisoned for most of it, writing from her cell about the birds outside the window and about the collapse of a socialist movement that had voted for war credits. Her critique of Lenin, written in 1918, contained the sentence about freedom belonging to the one who thinks differently — an argument against a revolution that abolishes elections and a free press.

After the German revolution of November 1918 she and Karl Liebknecht founded the Communist Party of Germany. She thought the January uprising premature and said so, then supported it once it began. On 15 January 1919 both were seized by Freikorps troops acting with the acquiescence of a Social Democratic government; she was beaten with a rifle butt, shot, and thrown into the Landwehr Canal. Her body was found four months later. She is buried in Friedrichsfelde, where a memorial demonstration has been held every January for more than a century.