- Rosa Luxemburg, (right, 1871-1919) and Clara Zetkin (1857-1933). Luxemburg was born in Poland into a liberal Jewish intellectual family and was interested in politics from her early teens. Other interests included Russian literature, natural sciences, painting, music and European languages. She often wrote she would like to have been a biologist were it not for the political upheaval of her times. Counterrevolutionary troops raided her home on January 15, 1919. She and Karl Liebknecht, her co-founder of the Spartacist Party, were taken to the troop headquarters and shot. Luxemburg was a great public speaker and wrote 700 books, pamphlets and articles about the political situations of her time. CLARA ZETKIN, born in Saxony, gave up her teaching profession to pursue her interest in Socialism. She was a visionary devoted to an idealized Socialist future and reacted strongly against injustice. When things went wrong, she became totally despairing. Zetkin and Luxemburg met about 1898 and became devoted friends and colleagues. Luxemburg acknowledged women’s rights, but believed they would be included in the advent of Socialism. Zetkin held stronger feminist views, was editor of two Socialist women’s publications, and chief of the German Socialist women’s organization. In 1910 she called on the Second International Socialist Congress in Copenhagen to set aside March 8 each year as International Working Woman’s Day.
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