In Berlin, thousands mourn Luxemburg and Liebknecht
Some 3,500 people on Sunday marched from Berlin's Frankfurter Tor to the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery for the annual commemoration of the lives of the murdered communists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. The cemetery, known as Germany's Monument to the Socialists, was an appropriate setting to commemorate the life of a woman who wrote: "Capital is a historical necessity, but so, too, is its gravedigger, the socialist proletariat."
Born to Jewish parents in 1871, in Congress Poland, Luxemburg joined the Proletariat Party when she was 15 and helped organize a general strike before taking her high school exit exams. She fled to Switzerland at age 18 to avoid detention and received her doctorate in law from the University of Zurich in 1897.
Advocating revolution over reform, Luxemburg saw danger in power, even when wielded by socialists. "Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party - though they are quite numerous - is no freedom at all," she wrote in a critique of post-revolution Russia published after her murder. "Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. The essence of political freedom depends not on the fanatics of 'justice,' but rather on all the invigorating, beneficial and detergent effects of dissenters. If 'freedom' becomes 'privilege,' the workings of political freedom are broken."
http://www.dw.com/en/in-berlin-thousands-mourn-luxemburg-and-liebknecht/a-37139055
