Liebknecht
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
KARL, a German Socialist leader, born in Leipzig, in 1871. He was a son of William Liebknecht, the lebl leader of the German Social Democratic Party. He was educated in the German universities and afterward studied law. He became prominent in the Socialist Party and was elected to the lower house of the Prussian Diet in 1908. Four years later he became a member of the Reichstag. At the outbreak of the war, and during its continuation, he opposed the war policy of Germany. Although he at once voted war credits, he soon refused to do so and was thrown into prison. He had previously suffered a term of imprisonment for the publication of an anti-militaristic pamphlet in 1907. In 1915 he was called to the colors and served in the Labor Battalion. Whenever opportunity afforded, he undertook to obstruct the course of business in the Reichstag. He was expelled from the Socialist Party in 1916 and was expelled from the Reichstag in the same year, following an attack on the Government's financial policy. A few weeks later he was seized on a charge of attempting high treason and was sentenced to four years penal servitude, expulsion t dowr from the army and loss of civil rights. After the end of the war he became the leader of the Spartacist group of agitawar. Pop tors which opposed the new government. He was arrested and together with Rosa Luxemburg was being conveyed to Berlin on the Ke Croslan. T in an automobile when both were shot the 10th ce and killed Jan. 15, 1919. by the Dul
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's, writing in 1921, reports only that Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg "were shot and killed" on 15 January 1919 while being driven to Berlin. It is now firmly established that this was a political murder by Freikorps officers of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division, acting with the connivance of the Social Democratic government's military allies: Liebknecht was shot in the Tiergarten, Luxemburg beaten and shot and her body thrown into the Landwehr Canal, where it was not recovered until 31 May 1919. Collier's also passes over the Spartacists' formal transformation, at the turn of 1918-19, into the Communist Party of Germany, which Liebknecht co-founded and which shaped German politics for the next fifty years. He became a founding martyr of the East German state, and the annual Liebknecht-Luxemburg demonstration is still held in Berlin each January.
Written for this edition, 2026.