MIA > Archive > Wilhelm Liebknecht
Written: In English by Charlotte Teller, August 1900.
Source: International Socialist Review, September 1st, 1900. Vol. 1, No. 3. pp. 155-159.
Public Domain: This work is free of any copyright restrictions.
Transcription and Markup: Bill Wright for marxists.org, July 2023.
MIA Editor’s Note: This article was written in the wake of Wilhelm Liebknecht’s unexpected death by a stroke on August 7th. However, it is less of an obituary and more of a personal and biographical sketch, based on impressions of a meeting with Liebknecht at some point in the previous year. Unfortunately the biographical sketch has several factual errors; I have corrected the worst of them using editor’s footnotes, but for a more accurate biographical sketch from this period I recommend Edward Aveling and Edith Sellers’ articles.
The first impression of Liebknecht was always a strong one, in spite of the fact that it allowed of no analysis. There was a realization of his dignity and presence though he was not a tall man; there was a perception at once of his intensity though his manner was calm and his conversation quiet. The first time I saw him he was standing at his desk in the office of the “Vorwaerts.” The room itself was in some confusion of books and papers, and Liebknecht’s high desk was covered with them; but after he turned to greet the two Socialists from Chicago — who came unannounced, without letter of introduction — no more thought was given to the surroundings. He appeared to be a man of sixty-five — in reality he was seventy-three. His iron-grey hair and beard did not conceal the strong lines of his face which showed a life of struggle. His features were large and somewhat roughly cut, but they were as firm as the thought behind them; his eyes were keen and clear. But, more than all else, there was a simplicity of manner which belongs only to those who have lived in the lives of other men, without compromise and without fear.
He went down to the book-room to get a catalogue and he passed through the office where twenty or thirty persons were waiting to see the advocate employed by the “Vorwaerts.” They all bowed to Liebknecht with the peculiar deference which is given only to those whose work has brought them into the hearts of the oppressed. He went through the room quickly, for he avoided always the slightest possible acknowledgment of his position.
And that, perhaps, explains the love he bore to an undisturbed outdoor life. Every day when the weather permitted he and Frau Liebknecht went to Grunewald, a great pine forest just outside Berlin, and spent several hours in walking or reading in one of the gardens. It was there that he usually read the Socialist journals from other lands, and no conversation about him ever disturbed his perusal of foreign news. One morning I saw him take out of his pocket papers from France, Belgium, Italy, Denmark and England — and he read one after the other with perfect ease. In a letter written the twenty-fourth of July he said, “Until the beginning of last week, when the heat set in, we had cool and wet weather, so that it was impossible to go often to the Grunewald.” And then he wrote of his extra work because of the number of vacations being taken by the staff of the “Vorwaerts”; so that it seems as if his death might be traced to overwork and the break in his regular exercise. He was stricken with paralysis on August seventh; overcome by the burdens he had taken upon his own shoulders, after living through the persecutions and dangers of a monarchy, in the midst of which he had spent his life as an avowed Republican.
Liebknecht’s life was coincident with the German conflict from 1848 to the year of his death. He was born at Giessen, in Hesse, and spent his boyhood in an atmosphere of books and culture;— his grandfather had been rector of the University of Giessen and it was there that Liebknecht first began to study in his rather unruly fashion, devoting much time to the things he liked, and refusing to drudge over the things he disliked. Later, he studied at the Universities of Marburg and Berlin, and among the books he read were the works of St. Simon. He was roused to such a pitch of enthusiasm that he decided to start for the land of democracy — for America.
But a Swiss teacher met him on his way to Hamburg and persuaded him to wait and watch the approaching crisis in European politics. Liebknecht had burnt his bridges behind him before starting out by announcing to his family his dissatisfaction with the existing conditions and his interest in the new school of French economists. And he found himself obliged to study for the law as a means of livelihood when he had crossed the border. Here in Zurich he came for the first time in contact with the workingmen and those who were antagonistic to the traditional governments. He learned that as early as 1833 there had been an uprising in Frankfort on the part of those who wished political equality, and he learned that the suppression of that uprising had sent these men across the border who had had the courage in their exile to publish a paper called the “Proscribed,” and to send it back to their fellows in Frankfort.
In this same year Marx and Engels — who had met in Paris three years before — converted the League of the Just into the Communist League and published the Communist Manifesto which marks the first epoch of Socialism and expressed the principles which have since served to unite workingmen of warring nations. Liebknecht’s enthusiasm had grown with his knowledge of the struggle for liberty; and he set out for Paris in 1848 ready to carry a musket with his French comrades. He was too late to fight, but he stayed in to study the methods of the Communists, and only left when he heard that the young poet [Georg] Herwegh was about to strike a blow for liberty in his own country.
Then he hurried across the frontier, only to cross it again after a few weeks of futile marches and repeated calls to arms. Liebknecht, as one of the most active “rebels” had naturally to seek Switzerland, but he soon returned to Baden where the ferment of discontent had been more constant. [Gustav] Struve was the leader, and with a disaffected army, which had found the king’s rule unsupportable, he might have been successful in establishing a republic, had he not been a procrastinator. Liebknecht himself was most active and showed the executive ability which has always made his work effective. However, after a season of hopeful progress, there was strife among the revolutionists, and the government was enabled to suppress the young Republic. Liebknecht was arrested and kept in parole nine months, which time he devoted to preparing a defense of himself as a Revolutionist and to courting his wife.
Much to his chagrin he was judged “not guilty” and had no opportunity of making a maiden speech in Baden, and yet his popularity which had obtained his acquittal could not procure his safety if he remained longer, and once again he set out for Switzerland.
In Geneva he undertook the education of workingmen’s groups in the principles and concepts of Socialism, and he accomplished enough to rouse the fears of both Prussia and Austria who demanded, in 1850, that the authorities of Geneva expel him from their city. Then began the most severe time of trial for Liebknecht. He went to London, without any outlook in the way of a living. He refused the financial help of Marx and Engels, both of whom became greatly interested in him and were well able to aid him. He tramped miles to secure pupils in German, and there were times when he felt actual hunger; worst of all; his wife and child were called upon to suffer with him, and they could not know the zest of the battle in which the young German felt himself.
At last he became the London correspondent for the “Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung” and was enabled to maintain himself until 1861, when an amnesty permitted him to return to Prussia. He was made one of the editors then of the “Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung” and as he was again given carte blanche in his work, he found himself in the most comfortable circumstances, as regarded his principles and his material welfare, that he had known since he left Giessen. His experience with English organizations led him to redouble his efforts in developing self-conscious groups of workingmen — he had lost his confidence in any effective middle-class movement years before. And he threw himself into the work with so much vigor that the rebuff which came in 1862 was almost enough to embitter him.
Bismarck had come into power and had won over the chief of the “Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung,” who, in turn, tried to persuade his colleague to restrain his logic and clever sarcasm to the point of meditative theorizing. This attempt at persuasion failed, and agents of Bismarck approached with offers of a brilliant sort which assured Liebknecht of a high position as the wage of compromise. The only alternative was poverty, and Liebknecht chose poverty. He resigned his position.
During this second term of financial uncertainty he was constantly persecuted by the police, who were never without hope that he might be tormented to the point of open resistance — an excuse for his arrest. But he worked on with perfect calmness, objected always to Bismarck’s policy and joined Lassalle’s movement. In 1865 a certificate of his good behavior in London was demanded of him, but as the English have no bureau for the investigation of peaceable individuals, he could not obtain one. He was arrested and told to leave Berlin, and his appeals to highest authorities were met by a reiterated command that he should go.
This banishment meant an acquaintance and friendship with [August] Bebel in Leipzig. They spent a year together, and the struggle was mainly for Internationalism, which became the point of difference between the Marxists and the Lassellians. It was due to Liebknecht’s efforts that there were so many converts to the Marx program.
After a time, family affairs called him to Berlin, and as there was an amnesty — understood by Liebknecht to cover his case — he returned without fear. He was in Berlin but four weeks when again arrested, and imprisoned for five months; his ban was still in force. When he came out of prison he found his wife dead; she had suffered too much, and her life was sacrificed to the work for the many sufferers.
In 1867 the Federation of Educational Societies endorsed the International platform after long, hard work done by Bebel and Liebknecht, and the founding of the Social Democratic party in 1869 marked a definite growth in the great movement. From that time on, Liebknecht’s life was divided between his work as editor of Socialist papers and as Socialist member in the German parliament; first in the North German Reichstag and then in the Imperial Reichstag, where his opposition to Bismarck’s policy was unceasing.
During the Franco-Prussian war he spoke constantly against the bills of appropriation as well as against the principles controlling a war-making government. His opposition brought about his arrest in 1872 for treason. For two years he was in imprisonment, and came out to find himself re-elected to his seat in the Reichstag.
To follow his activities is to trace every phase of Socialist development in Germany, from the acceptance by a united party of the platform drawn up at Gotha (1875) to the recent discussion of measures which took the attention of the last conference in October. With the founding of the “Vorwaerts” as the organ of the party he was made its editor,[a] and everything that he wrote hit the mark, and brought terror to the Philistines. He alternately counselled his comrades and hurled powerful invectives against compromise and capitalism.
The newspapers were suppressed in 1890 and the 67 societies in Berlin were forced to sham dead, but this martyrdom only served to increase secret activities, and at the next election there were 311,961 votes from Berlin alone. Later in the year Liebknecht spoke to a meeting of the International at Halle, at which four hundred delegates from ten different countries were present.[b] And it seems as if this leader of men were always present at the great conferences held from year to year. At the one in Breslau in 1896 he replied to the contemptible phrase of the Kaiser, who had called the Socialists “Rotte von Menschen” [“Mob”], and, though a man of seventy years, a leader of the people and a deputy in the Reichstag, he was sentenced to a four months’ imprisonment for lése majesté.[c]
He pointed the prison out, one day last year, as we were riding out of Berlin on the elevated [street tram]. “It would not have been so disagreeable if the room had been large enough to walk in, and if it had not been over the kitchen, where they were always cooking cabbage!”
Yet he spoke of his persecution in the most philosophical manner; he knew why he had experienced the blows of a monarchical and capitalistic society, and that knowledge gave him the power of repose. And besides, he could see the great results of his unremitting effort; in the immense growth of the Socialist vote, which in Germany in 1898 amounted to two millions and a quarter, in the great spread of the International principles, and in the fear of existing governments.
He lived to fulfill the words he spoke in his defense in 1872: “A two-fold ideal has been before me since my youth — a free and united Germany and the emancipation of the working people, that is, the destruction of class rule, which is synonymous with the freeing of humanity. For this double ideal I have fought with my best powers, and for this double ideal I shall fight as long as there is breath in my body. Das will die Pflicht! (that wills Duty!)”
Charlotte Teller.
[a] Liebknecht originally shared his editor-in-chief title with Wilhelm Hasenclever, a representative of the Lassallean faction of the recently unified party. The original version of Vorwaerts was banned by the 1878 Anti-Socialist Laws and forced to stop publication. With the end of the Anti-Socialist Laws in 1890, Vorwaerts was revived and Liebknecht appointed as its sole editor-in-chief by the SPD’s 1890 party congress. However, Liebknecht’s neutral, debate-focused editorial policy toward intraparty disputes frustrated the party’s executive committee (Vorstand), and, with Engels’ support, they slowly supplanted Liebknecht’s real authority over editorial decisions, although he retained his prestigious title and continued to write articles for the paper.
[b] The newspapers were in fact suppressed in 1878, at the start of the Anti-Socialist Laws, and became legal again in 1890, when the Anti-Socialist Laws were allowed to lapse. The bit about the International however is not an error — alongside the Halle congress of the SPD, there was indeed a conference (as distinct from a congress) of the Second International held in Halle in 1890.
[c] The Breslau party congress of the SPD was in fact held in 1895, not 1896. The speech that led to Liebknecht’s imprisonment for lése majesté is available to read here. This prosecution of one of Germany’s foremost political leaders made international headlines even in the capitalist press.
Last updated on 10 July 2023