MIA > Archive > Wilhelm Liebknecht
Written: In English by Edith Sellers, 1896.
Source: The Fortnightly Review, June 1st, 1896. No. CCCLIV (354), pp. 997-1008.
Public Domain: This work is free of any copyright restrictions.
Transcription and Markup: Bill Wright for marxists.org, June 2023.
Thanks to Einde O’Callaghan for translating the remaining German phrases.
MIA Editor’s Note: This biographical sketch of Wilhelm Liebknecht was originally published in The Fortnightly Review, a British literary and political magazine that professed to be “non-partisan.” The article may well have been written to coincide with a high-profile speaking tour that month, which had Liebknecht giving English-language political lectures across Britain. As for Edith Sellers, she appears to have been a left-liberal writer, with her other articles published in the Review dealing with poor relief laws and other social reform topics.
For this transcription, I have made one significant change: while the original text quotes Liebknecht in the German language with the English translation in footnotes, this MIA edition shows the English in the main text with the German in footnotes. Single German words have been left in the text and translated with newly added [editor’s brackets] as necessary.
Some fifty years ago Wilhelm Liebknecht said good-bye to Giessen, the little Hessian town where he was horn, and started on his way to America. He was a handsome lad of twenty in those days, with a bright sensitive face, and a touch of the dreamer in his eyes. His manner was that of one whose lines were cast in pleasant places; he carried a well-filled purse, and had more brains in his head — he had proved it in three universities — than most of his kind. He was leaving Germany, he told those with whom he travelled, because he had no fancy for being transformed into a peruked mummy. The social atmosphere of the Old World was too stifling for his taste, he said, and there were too many cobwebs in the air. He had been reading St. Simon, it seems, and was revelling in wild projects for turning earth into heaven, and making all men brothers.
In the course of the journey quite a friendship sprang up between him and one of his fellow-passengers, a German professor who held an appointment in Switzerland. The man was interested by the boy’s enthusiasm, by his eager longing to be of use to his kind; he was amused too, perhaps, by his ignorance of what was going on in the world around him. Here he was, on the very eve of the general awakening, shaking the dust of Europe from off his feet because, as he believed, the sleep men were sleeping there was that of the dead. And he was one who in the troublous days that were coming, might do good service if he were but in Germany; of this the professor was soon convinced. He therefore promptly set to work to persuade him to renounce, for the time at least, all thought of emigrating. His first duty was to the Fatherland, he told him roundly; and there was work better worth doing to be done in the Old World than in the New. He dropped a hint, too, that there would be plenty of hard fighting in Europe before long. This was enough for young Liebknecht. He straightaway turned his back on Hamburg; and, acting on the advice of his new friend, betook himself to Zürich.
Up to the time he went to Zürich, Wilhelm Liebknecht’s life had been much the same as that of most German boys belonging to the middle classes. He is a member of an old Hessian family. One of his ancestors was rector of the Giessen University at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and most of his relatives are either professors or state officials. He was quite a child when his father died, but he was left not only well provided with money, but with careful guardians to look after him. When he was sixteen he matriculated at the Giessen University, and he soon made his mark there, both by his great ability and by a certain independence of character which distinguished him even then. He was quite willing to work to any extent, but only on his own lines. He would have nothing whatever to do with what he calls “Brodstudium”;[a] and, that a man should read a book for the mere purpose of passing an examination, was quite beyond his comprehension. “I wished to study that I might educate myself,” he tells us; “and I wished to educate myself that I might fulfil my duties towards the state, and towards society.”[1] He had a clear head and sharp wits, and took immense delight in his work, throwing his whole heart and soul into the most diverse subjects, and reading books his teachers had never heard of. After a time he went to Berlin for a special course of study, and later to the University at Marburg.
In very early days it had been decided by his family that he should enter the service of the State; but this he stoutly refused to do when once he realised the sort of life — tied hand and foot with red tape — that would be his as an official. Besides, the bolstering up of a petty duke was not the kind of work that appealed to him at all; for he had already developed a hearty scorn of principalities and powers, and was strongly democratic in sympathy. “Ever since I could think I have been a republican,” he informed the Court, when on his trial for high treason; “and as a republican I shall die.”[2] Now, in those days, the hair of the rulers of Hesse would certainly have stood straight on end at the mere thought of having in their service a Republican. His own wish was to obtain a professorship at one of the smaller universities, if he could do so without giving up his independence; and it was only when he found that this was impossible, that he decided to emigrate.
In Zürich Herr Liebknecht settled down at once to study law with a view to being called to the bar. His friend the professor had given him letters of introduction to many of the notables in the place, and he soon began to feel so completely at home there that he had serious thoughts of being naturalised. In Switzerland he was for the first time in his life, as he tells us, brought into personal contact with the working classes. “I used to go to the German Workmen’s Union in Zürich, but only that I might obtain information, as this was the first opportunity I had had of hearing the workers themselves speak of their position and aspirations.”[3] And it was what he heard from these workers of their poverty and their misery that first brought home to him the fact that political rights are of no great use to a man when he is face to face with starvation. He had not much time, however, just then for studying either sociology or anything else; for on the 23rd of February, 1848, a telegram reached Zürich:— “There is fighting in Paris.”[4] This was the signal for which he had been waiting ever since that day when he had sprung out of the Hamburg coach. There was not a minute to lose he knew, and before nightfall he was miles on his way towards the French frontier. But although he travelled night and day, the battle was already fought and won when he entered Paris; and the barricades were being removed. He bemoaned his fate aloud, of course, for to have been within hailing distance of a great fight and yet to have missed it, was, for one of his temperament, trying, to say the least of it. He had his compensations, however, for the days that followed were wonderful days, the brightest and happiest, perhaps, that he has ever yet known. Not only was Paris itself awake, but its very air was alive with plans for arousing the whole world. Europe was on the point of being transformed into one huge Utopia, of this Liebknecht had never a doubt; and he revelled, as only such as he can revel, in the thought of the good time that was coming.
Of the many wild schemes that were formed in Paris that Spring, the wildest and maddest of all was that in which Liebknecht had a hand. So mad was it indeed, that even then, when prudence was more at a discount than ever before or since, men stood amazed when they heard of it. Its purpose was nothing less than to revolutionise all of Germany; the kings and sovereign princes were each in turn to be driven forth, and their dominions were to be reorganized on a republican basis. And this was to be done by a handful of young enthusiasts with a poet, Georg Herwegh, at their head. They were lacking alike in arms, money, and experience, but little they recked of that; for to a man they were convinced that, if they could but once plant the Republican flag on German soil, the whole nation would join them. So confident was Liebknecht that this would be the case, that he almost worked himself to death hurrying on the expedition, with the result that, to his despair, he fell ill just when the time had come for it to start. He hurried after it the first day he could leave his bed; but only to find that the Wurtembergers, instead of fraternising with their would-be deliverers, had sent out soldiers against them and defeated them. Thus there was nothing for him to do but to make his escape with all possible speed into Switzerland.
Herr Liebknecht does not seem to have been much depressed by this experience, for only a few months later we find him again in the field, helping [Gustav] Struve to raise an insurrection in Baden. This venture was at first more successful than Herwegh’s had been; for the Badeners were so thoroughly discontented with their ruler, that they were glad to give a helping hand to anyone who would attack him. Struve had soon quite a respectable force at his back, one, however, which he was no more capable than a school boy of leading. He sent Liebknecht into the highlands to arrange a junction with some insurgents whom he believed, though wrongly, to be encamped there, and he then allowed himself to be decoyed into the open country, where he was fallen upon by the Grand Duke’s army and defeated. When Liebknecht heard of this disaster, instead of seeking safety across the Rhein, he plunged further into the country, in the hope of managing something or other in the way of an insurrection. But before he had time to carry out his purpose, he was captured by some farmers and led off to Freiburg. There he was kept for nine months as a sort of prisoner on parole; and he whiled away the weariness of the time by falling in love with the lady whom he afterwards married.
It chanced that just at the time appointed for Liebknecht’s trial — May 12th, 1849 — the discontent, which had long been smouldering in Baden, burst into flames. The whole country was in an uproar; on the 10th, the garrison at Freiburg had mutinied, and it was an open secret that the Grand Duke was preparing to take flight. When the young rebel was brought into court, he was greeted with loud cheers and with cries of “You will soon be free.”[5] To ask for a condemnation under the circumstances would, the Public Prosecutor knew, be a sheer waste of time; he, therefore, being a wise man, promptly suggested that a verdict of “not guilty” should be given. And given it was, in spite of the protests of the prisoner, who was thus baulked of his chance of defending what he had done. His acquittal, however, was hailed as a triumph for the popular cause; and he himself was fêted as a hero, and young as he was he played quite an important rôle in Baden during the time of the Provisional Government, which was established, with [Lorenzo] Brentano at its head, after the Grand Duke’s flight. He proved a sore thorn in the side, though, to his chief, with whose desultory ways he had no patience whatever, and whose prudence he dubbed cowardice. He knew that rebels who dally court disaster; when, therefore, he saw day after day go by without anything being done, he quite lost his head in his rage and indignation. He openly denounced Brentano as a traitor, who was deliberately playing into the hands of the enemy, and he called upon his colleagues, Herr [Johann Philipp] Becker and Struve, to depose him. The answer he received was a hint to mind his own business, and leave the management of affairs to his elders. Nor was he given any choice in the matter, for Brentano promptly — and not unnaturally — had him arrested. When he was released, his worst fears were already verified, the rebels had had their chance and had lost it. The Emperor William I., then Prince of Prussia, was marching into Baden at the head of a large army. Liebknecht at once joined Becker’s troop; and wherever fighting was hardest, there he was, wielding heavy blows, and risking his life in the most reckless fashion. He might just as well have been asleep, however, for any good he did — and this he knew — for the forces the rebels had against them were overwhelming. It was only by a piece of good luck that, after the last defeat, he was able to escape across the Swiss frontier.
This Baden expedition was in some respects a turning-point in Liebknecht’s career. When he joined it he was practically a boy, with all a boy’s recklessness, hopefulness, and generous trust in his kind: but, in those terrible days when he was eating out his heart because, as he believed, treachery was rife even among his own comrades, every trace of youth vanished. When he returned to Switzerland he was a man, one who, although as eager to help as ever, scanned his fellows carefully before he trusted them. He had had a trying experience, it must be admitted. Even when the flag of revolt was flying, and every one was carrying his life in his hand, again and again he had seen the interests of the masses sacrificed to those of the classes; had seen, too, men whose talk was all of equality and brotherhood exploiting for their own benefit the helpless and poor. He had proof, too, or thought he had, that the great middle class, the “Intelligentia,” from whom he had once hoped great things, were not one whit less self-seeking than, say, feudal nobles. Were political power in their hands they would use it, he was now convinced, for the promotion of their own interests just as ruthlessly, just as unscrupulously, as the narrowest of petty princes. If Germany were to be freed, it was not they who would free her; nor was it they who would even undertake the task of rendering the lives of her workers less intolerable. If these things were to be done they must be done by the masses, not the classes. This was a point on which he soon made up his mind; and, from the day he did so, he threw in his lot with them heart and soul. Then and there he determined to make it the business of his life to fit them for their work so far as in them lay.
He established himself at Geneva and started a regular propaganda among the German workers there. He gave up his whole time to them, going about among them, talking to them, holding discussions, delivering lectures, and trying in all possible ways to arouse them cut of their apathy and make them realize the responsibility of their position. His teaching at this lime, although strongly socialistic, was educational rather than revolutionary; he was training and organizing, and nothing was further from his thoughts than conspiracy. His popularity among the people soon became so great as to excite the alarm of the Austrian and the Prussian Governments. Professing to believe that he was making preparations for an invasion of Baden, they brought pressure to bear on the Geneva authorities, with the result that, in February, 1850, he was expelled from Switzerland. Germany was closed to him of course; and, as France also refused him a shelter, he took up his abode in London.
“In London I lived for thirteen years, busy with socio-political studies,” Herr Liebknecht once remarked; “and still more with the struggle for existence,”[6] he added, with an odd little smile. Those thirteen years he spent in England were indeed a terrible time, one long hand to hand fight for bread. He was almost penniless when he landed — his property had been confiscated — and he brought with him a wife and child to support. He had, it is true, friends who would gladly have come to his aid, Friedrich Engels, who had worked with him in Geneva, for one, Karl Marx for another; but he would have none of their help; for he holds strongly that every man must live by the labour of his own hands or head. So he set off at once on the tramp, as it were, in search of pupils; for he knew by experience, that, if he could do nothing else well, he could teach. And he found some after a time; but the giving of casual lessons is not a lucrative calling; and do what he would, the grim wolf hovered around in the distance. But even when things were at the worst with him, he was never for one moment unmindful of the cause he had espoused; his chief anxiety was always how could the interests of the workers best be furthered? By what means could their condition be rendered more happy? He joined the Communist League, and became an active co-adjutor in the work Marx and Engels were then carrying on. After a time his circumstances improved a little as he became the London correspondent of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung.
A characteristic little story is told à propos of Liebknecht’s appointment to this post. Lassalle, who was himself then living in the greatest luxury, denounced him as a renegade for accepting it; he was quite shocked at the thought of a socialist writing for money. Yet he knew full well the state of Liebknecht’s affairs at the time; knew, too, that his letters as correspondent, although written for an anti-socialist journal, were honest letters, and that in them he never deviated by one hair’s breath from his convictions.
In 1862, the Prussian Government having granted an amnesty, Herr Liebknecht went to Berlin, and joined the staff of the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, as chief of the foreign department. There he was in a delightful position: he was surrounded by friends, for the Berliners welcomed him warmly; he had a fairly large income at his command; and, above all, he had work which he thoroughly enjoyed and which he felt was well worth doing. His editor, August Brass, was an old friend, a comrade of the days of ’48; and the journal was pledged to advocate social democracy and to wage war against capitalism, militarism, and every other form of oppression. From the first, Liebknecht’s articles excited great interest, both by their boldness and the literary skill with which they were written; and he soon made his mark as an orator. The Berlin workers hung on his words with delight when he spoke, for never before had they been addressed in terms at once so persuasive and so convincing. His popularity among them increased from day to day, and his influence made itself felt at every turn. But, as often happens, just when all was brightest a cloud appeared. One day he noticed in the Zeitung, an article of which he could not at all understand the bearing, as it seemed to imply approval of the policy of Herr von Bismarck, who was then just coming into power in Berlin. As this was in direct opposition to the views the journal had hitherto upheld, he went at once to the Editor for an explanation, and was assured that he had mistaken the meaning of the article. Nothing was further from his intention, Herr Brass declared, than to support the new minister. But the first article was followed by others of a similar nature; and in the course of a very few days Liebknecht had proof that both Herr Brass and his journal had been captured by Herr von Bismarck. Whereupon he promptly threw up his post, in spite of the entreaties of his editor, who promised that, if he would but continue writing for his paper, he might advocate in it, as strongly as he chose, not only socialism, but communism.
The loss of the Allgemeine Zeitung was a terrible blow for Liebknecht; it plunged him at one fell swoop from a position of comparative affluence back into his old poverty-stricken state. He was entirely dependent on his writing for his daily bread; and there was now no paper in all Prussia for which he, as a social democrat, could write. He felt, too, the crippling influence of the struggle for existence the more, coming as it did suddenly after a brief spell of prosperity. His poverty hemmed him in on every side; it was impossible for him to carry on his propaganda unless he had some means of gaining a livelihood. It was just at this time, when he was more weighed down than ever before or since by the difficulties of his position, that he was subjected to a peculiarly subtle form of temptation. Bismarck, who was then bent on winning the working-classes over to his side, and who knew that in this task no one could help him more effectually than Liebknecht, undertook to “capture” him. “I cannot say positively that Herr von Bismarck wished to buy me over;” Liebknecht confesses, “but I can say that Herr von Bismarck’s agents wished to buy me over, under conditions, too, which, excepting in my own eye, and those of my comrades, would have preserved intact my personal dignity.”[7] The most seductive proposals were made to him. If he would but support the Government in their struggle with the middle classes, he might in fact name his own terms, he was told. Not only would ample means be placed at his disposal, but a free hand would be given him to preach socialism as much as he liked, and to buy what social experiments he chose. But Liebknecht, who understood to a nicety the man with whom he had to deal, indignantly rejected all his offers; although when he did so he realised to the full what the consequences would be: “Had I had the baseness to sacrifice my principles to my personal interests,” he said, speaking of this episode in his history, when on his trial in 1872; “I should now be in a brilliant position, instead of here in the prisoner’s dock, where they who years ago sought to buy me, have brought me.”[8]
Bismarck speedily changed his tone when he found that Liebknecht was not to be bought, and the police were given to understand that it would be well if he were harried out of Berlin. But this was not an easy thing to do, for Liebknecht, although he stood to his guns gallantly, was careful to give his enemy no point of vantage. He organized a crusade against Bismarck, it is true, but on strictly Constitutional lines. He denounced him and his state socialism upon all occasions. It is simply a scheme for destroying both the working classes and the bourgeoisie by playing off the one against the other, he declared; and he strove night and day to prevent the workers from falling into the snare he saw the minister had prepared for them. As for the much-vaunted Universal Suffrage which was being held out as a bait, “what is the use of it to us?” he asked. “So long as the Press is muzzled and the right of public meeting is withheld, it is the reactionaries alone who will profit by it.”[9] Lassalle, who was also carrying on an active socialistic propaganda, had founded the Allgemeine Arbeiterverein; [General German Workers’ Association] and although there was little sympathy between the two men, Liebknecht joined it for the express purpose of preventing its falling under the influence of Bismarck. And in this he succeeded — at least, for the time — a fact which made the police redouble their efforts against him. It had, in fact, become a duel between him on the one side, and the police, with the all-powerful minister behind them, on the other; and the result was, of course, a foregone conclusion. One beautiful morning in the summer of 1865 he was informed that his presence in Prussia was regarded as a danger to the State, and that he must therefore quit the kingdom within twenty-four hours. And this measure was meted out to him, although he had broken no law, and no offence of any kind could be alleged against him.
At this very time, when he stood most sorely in need of her sympathy, his wife, to whom he was devoted, died, worn out by ceaseless care and anxiety. For years they had been leading a precarious hand to mouth existence; and this, combined with the petty, worrying persecution to which they were subjected by the police, had told on her strength severely. Then came the decree of banishment. It was the last straw. Liebknecht was left to face the world alone.
He is not the man, however, to allow his personal feelings to interfere with his work as a leader. Before many weeks had passed he was in harness again, in Leipzig. Thanks to Count Beust’s legislation, the working classes then enjoyed much greater freedom in Saxony than in Prussia; they were, too, intellectually more alert, and more keenly interested in politics. But although they were for the most part staunch democrats, they were inclined to look on Socialists with suspicion. Liebknecht felt strongly that if Socialism were to become a power in Germany, these were the very men who must be induced to join its ranks. He therefore at once set to work to try to win their support. Every leisure moment he had he passed among them, arguing with them, persuading them, and bringing to bear on them all the force of his eloquence, the force, too, of that strong magnetic personal influence he wields. In Herr Bebel, the ablest of the Leipzig labour leaders, he found a quite ideal lieutenant; and the two threw themselves into their work as Socialist propagandists with a fervour which carried everything before it. They had not long to wait for the fruits of their labour. In August, 1866, the Saxon workers, at a mass meeting, accepted with enthusiasm the Socialist programme Liebknecht had drawn up for them. A month later they adopted as an article of faith Marx’s theory as to the necessity of political power being in the hands of the masses; and the next year, during the struggle which preceded the General Election for the Constituent Assembly, they entered the field for the first time as political agitators. They had to fight, though, without their leader, for Liebknecht was in prison at the time. Under the impression that the decree against him had lapsed, he had ventured into Berlin to arrange some private business, and had thus given the Prussian Government an opportunity of which they were not slow to avail themselves, of keeping him safe under lock and key during the elections. If they thought, however, that they could by these means keep him out of the Constituent Assembly, they were mistaken; for he was elected member that same autumn, and he used his privilege as a deputy to protest strongly against the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein.
Up to 1870 Liebknecht's energy was devoted chiefly towards fighting against State Socialism on the one hand, and, on the other, trying to reconcile the various sections into which the Social Democrats were divided, and form them into one strong party. Then came the French war, against which from the first he protested vigorously, so vigorously, indeed, that Prince Bismarck from Versailles telegraphed orders that both he and Bebel should be arrested. They were brought to trial for high treason in March, 1872. Liebknecht was accused of having insulted the Emperor by alluding to him as Kaiser Bomba and the Kartätschen Prince;[10] of having outraged the dignity of the army by speaking of soldiers as “white slaves in uniform,” and of propagating doctrines dangerous to the State. He was found guilty and condemned to two years imprisonment. His fellow-countrymen showed their appreciation of this sentence by electing him, while he was still in prison, member of the Reichstag.
In the Reichstag Liebknecht was brought face to face with his old antagonist, Prince Bismarck, and at once proclaimed war to the knife against him and all that he had ever done, or wished to do; for he looks on him as the arch-enemy of the German people; his militarism is sucking their very life’s blood away, he declares. The prince has had many opponents in his time, but not one among them has ever attacked him at once so ruthlessly and so unscrupulously as this Hessian Socialist. Again and again his fellow-members stood aghast at the accusations and reproaches he hurled at him. He denounced him not only as the enslaver of the nation, but as its corruptor, its demoraliser. He showed how unscrupulously he used his power to stifle public opinion; how he lavished the taxpayers’ money on his reptile Press, and harried without mercy every journalist who criticized him or his measures. He showed, too, the malignity with which he pursued all who had ever ventured to run counter to his plans; the petty devices to which he had had recourse to compass their ruin — even opening private letters and employing domestic servants as spies. And what gave such terrible force to his words was that he had always proof at hand for every statement he made. Everything that could be done Prince Bismarck did to reduce his assailant to silence. Liebknecht was imprisoned again and again; he was fined; his journal was confiscated; but it was all in vain. And, as always happens in such cases, the more he was persecuted the more popular he became.
So long as there were divisions in the Socialist camp, Prince Bismarck regarded the advance of the movement with equanimity; but when, in 1875, the Lassalleaners and the Eisenachers having at length buried the hatchet, the United Social Democrat Party was formed,[b] he changed his attitude, and introduced into the Reichstag his famous Anti-Socialist laws. They were rejected, however, thanks to the gallant tooth and nail battle Liebknecht and Bebel waged against them. They were passed, though, two years later in the panic that followed the attempt on the Emperor’s life — a crime of which the socialists disapproved as strongly as Prince Bismarck himself. During the twelve years the laws were in force, Liebknecht — as all his colleagues — was subject to every form of persecution, and was hunted about from pillar to post at the mere caprice of the police. He was separated from his children — he had a second wife and a young family — and he was forced to live in an out-of-the-way village, where there was no possibility of their being educated. Every obstacle was thrown in the way of his holding intercourse with his party; spies dogged his steps wherever he went, and took down every word he said. Not only was he prohibited from addressing meetings, but his writings — on which both he and his family depended for their support — were confiscated on the most frivolous pretexts. The one gleam of sunshine that fell to his lot during those long, dark years, was when he went to America on a lecturing tour. Some odd experiences came in his way while there, owing to his being constantly mistaken for the late Mr. [James G.] Blaine, between whom and himself there was a strong personal resemblance.
When, in 1890, the Special Laws lapsed, the feeling was general in Europe that there was trouble ahead for Germany. The harsh treatment to which they had been subjected could not have failed, it was held, to have embittered the Socialists and rendered them reckless. Embittered them it certainly had; but, far from rendering them reckless, it had taught them prudence, made them understand that in this nineteenth century the battle is not to the strong but to the able, the skilful. When they returned to the fight they were no longer armed with slings and stones but with maxims: they had, in fact, become trained soldiers who knew all the latest moves in the game. When the General Election came round Prince Bismarck had proof that the net result of those laws of his, from which he had hoped for such great things, was an enormous increase of the power of Socialism. In 1878 the Socialists there were but a band of free lances; in 1890 they had become a strong political party, one which bids fair before long to have a dominant voice in the State. And this party is in a great measure Herr Liebknecht's handiwork; it is he who has organized it, and who inspires it and leads it. The vow he made forty-seven years ago now, he has kept to the letter; so far as in them lies he has fitted the German workers for the great rôle which he firmly believes they are destined to play.
Wilhelm Liebknecht is an old man now, on the 29th of last March his seventieth birthday was kept as a red letter day by the wage-earning classes throughout Germany. For nearly fifty years his life has been one long fight, a fight for the poor against the rich, for the helpless against those in high places. He has had ranged against him the privileged classes to a man, and all the power of the state with the great chancellor at its head, while the forces on his side have been not only weak, but often wavering and torn by faction. None the less it is with him that the victory rests, he has made mistakes, no doubt, in the course of the struggle; he has been too yielding sometimes, too unbending at others, and has sacrificed doctrine to expediency. In his eagerness to redress the grievances of the poor, he has been apt to forget that the rich have rights which must be considered, and that even German officials have a claim to be treated as human beings. Just now and then, too, he has allowed his profound mistrust of the men who rule Germany, and the system under which she is ruled, to tempt him into a course which must have been repugnant to his feelings as a patriot. When he has erred, however, it has always been that his judgment has been led astray; from first to last he has never wavered in his principles or in his devotion to the workers. What is best, not for himself or for his, but for them, is, and always has been, his first thought. For their sake he has passed his days in poverty, has been led away to judgment, and has kept long weary vigils in prison. Even now, in spite of his burden of three score years and ten, he is as eager as ever to throw himself into the breach when they are threatened with wrong.
And his enemies still pursue him just as relentlessly as in the old days. The next Reichstag vacation he will pass in prison, because he ventured to remark one day that “Rotte” [“Mob”] was hardly an appropriate expression for the Emperor to apply to a political party which numbers in its ranks two millions of his subjects.
Edith Sellers.
[1] “Ich wollte studiren um mich auszubilden, und wollte mich ausbilden um meine Pflichten in Staat und Gesellschaft erfüllen zu können.”
[2] “Seit ich fähig bin zu denken, bin ich Republikaner, und als Republikaner werde ich sterben.”
[3] “Den deutschen Arbeiterverein in Zürich besuchte ich wohl, jedoch nur um mich zu unterrichten, da ich nun zum ersten mal Gelegenheit hatte die Arbeiter selbst sich über ihre Lage und Strebungen aussprechen zu hören.”
[4] “Man schlägt sich in Paris.”
[5] “Ihr seid bald frei.” No English translation was provided in the original text. —MIA Editor’s Note
[6] “In London lebte ich dreizehn Jahre lang, mit politischsozialen Studien beschäftigt, und noch mehr mit dem Kampf um das Dasein.”
[7] “Ich kann nicht positiv sagen dass Herrn von Bismarck mich kaufen wollte, aber ich kann sagen dass die Agenten des Herrn von Bismarck mich kaufen wollten, und zwar unter Bedingungen die ausser vor mir selbst und meinen Parteigenossen, meine persönliche Würde vollständig gewahrt hätten.”
[8] “Hätte ich die Niederträchtigkeit besessen meine Prinzipien meinem persönlichen Interesse zu opfern, ich wäre jetzt in glänzender Stellung anstatt hier auf der Bank der Angeklagten, wohin mich Die gebracht haben die mich vor Jahren vergebens zu kaufen suchten.”
[9] This line is presented in English in the original text, although it was almost certainly spoken in German like the other Liebknecht quotes. —MIA Editor’s Note
[10] That is, the “Bomber Emperor” and the “Cartridge Prince”. No translation was provided in the original. —MIA Editor’s Note
[a] “Brodstudium” is an archaic term or inside joke with no clear definition.
[b] “Eisenachers” refers to the Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP) of Germany, formed in 1869 in the city of Eisenach (hence the nickname) and counting Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel as prominent leaders. “Lassalleaners” refers to the General German Workers’ Association (ADAV) mentioned before, although Lassalle himself was killed in a duel in 1864 and did not attend the congress. The formal name of the unified party was the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands), although members of both unified factions continued to refer to themselves as Social Democrats.
Last updated on 14 June 2023