Witness to the German Revolution

by Victor Serge

  Let us turn our eyes towards that which is being born!

  This article was written for the fourth anniversary of the deaths of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. The KPD organized annual rallies on the anniversary of their death; demonstrators carried Käthe Kollwitz’s picture of Liebknecht on his deathbed with his head in a bloodstained bandage.

  The Anniversary of January 15: Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

  Correspondance internationale, January 10, 1923

  Since 1919, January 15 has become a day of mourning for revolutionaries all round the world.

  On January 15, 1919, the young German revolution was beheaded and the fate of the European revolution was compromised by the double murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

  Nothing of that day must be forgotten. The class war goes on. We must remember what the enemy did, what it is still capable of. Here are the proofs: a file of the SPD daily paper Vorwärts, official statements… We should reread this, comrades, at the time of the occupation of the Ruhr, while starvation is establishing itself in the homes of 30 million German workers.

  On January 13 and 14, 1919, the Spartacists55—the German Communists of the proud Spartacus group which, not long before, had been alone in its defiance of the Kaiser and of Ludendorff—were fighting in the streets of Berlin against the troops of a socialist government. This government had provoked the rising by removing from office the red police chief of Berlin, our comrade Eichhorn. 56 The working class were determined to keep power in the capital. They went over from the defensive to the offensive, and the struggle for power was engaged.

  On January 14, the SPD government, obviously alarmed, issued an appeal to the population… “We must defend our frontiers against the new military despotism in Russia”—this was written in 1919, at a time when several historical miracles seemed necessary to save Communist Russia, encircled and starving, under attack from Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich!57—“Bolshevism means death to peace, death to freedom, death to socialism…” wrote the very people who, two days later, would make holes in the skulls of Karl and Rosa! “The present government is composed of social democrats […] representatives of the working class […] The present government is defending the cause of democracy and socialism…” The appeal was signed: Ebert, Scheidemann, Landsberg, Noske, Wissell.58

  On January 15, the victory of socialist order was confirmed. Liebknecht, recognized and informed on, was taken prisoner in a suburb of Berlin, Mannheimerstrasse 43, in Wilmersdorf. Vorwärts rejoiced: on this very day the paper had returned to its old premises, from which Noske’s police had driven out the Spartacist “bandits.” Then, a day of silence. That’s order.

  On January 17 at dawn, the workers of Berlin learned from their newspapers the abominable tragedy which had been kept from them for 48 hours. For 48 hours Karl and Rosa had been dead, “victims of the civil war which they themselves sparked off,” wrote the anonymous member of the Vorwärts staff detailed to clean the pavement after the murder.

  An official statement from the police headquarters—they call it the Polizeipräsidium—described the crime in terms of such administrative lunacy that you feel ashamed for the murderers. Just listen.

  “Having been arrested during the evening at Wilmersdorf, Dr. Karl Liebknecht was taken to the Eden Hotel, where the headquarters of the Horse Guards division had been set up. From there, he was due to be transferred to the Moabit prison.

  “At 9pm a large crowd was blocking the exits to the hotel. Dr. Liebknecht was got out through a back door and made to get into a car; he was warned that if he made any attempt to escape, the guards would use their weapons.” (This clumsy confession of premeditation is emphasized in the text.) “The crowd surrounded the car. An unknown person gave Dr. Liebknecht a violent blow on the back of the head. He began bleeding copiously. The driver accelerated. To avoid the mob, it was decided to make a detour by way of the zoo. Near the New Lake the car stopped; the engine was out of order because of the excessive speed, and needed to be fixed. Dr. Liebknecht was asked if he felt well enough to walk to the Charlottenburger Chaussée, where it was hoped they could find a taxi. The prisoner replied in the affirmative. But they were scarcely 50 yards from the car when Dr Liebknecht broke free of his escort and began to run straight ahead. A man who tried to stop him got a knife wound on the right hand.” (Again, this is emphasized in the original text.) “As Liebknecht did not stop running, despite repeated warnings, several shots were fired at him. He fell, killed on the spot.”

  The Berlin zoo is a huge park situated in the middle of the city, and deserted in the evening. Liebknecht was taken there “to avoid the mob.” Liebknecht didn’t have the presence of mind to throw himself into the thickets which run along both sides of all the paths. He “ran straight ahead,” knowing very well that he would be shot at. This prisoner had been warned he would be killed, but he was not handcuffed. At the guards’ headquarters, they had even left him with a knife. Scrupulously, Noske’s soldiers repeated their warnings before shooting him and killing him on the spot, a man running through a darkened wood at 11pm!

  To cobble together this inept account the authorities needed no less than 48 hours. They had to find some explanation of why, having been arrested without offering the slightest resistance at 9:30pm, Liebknecht was killed in a deserted place two hours later!

  At the same time Rosa Luxemburg was also dying.

  “The threatening crowd surrounding the Eden Hotel had several times tried to seize Frau Rosa Luxemburg. Her guards succeeded in taking her as far as the running-board of the car which had been prepared for her. At this moment there was a scuffle. Frau Rosa Luxemburg became separated from her escort, and when they snatched her back from the crowd she was unconscious. They stretched her out on the front seat of the car. As the car was moving off, an unknown man leaped onto the running-board and fired a pistol shot at point blank range into the unconscious Frau Rosa Luxemburg.

  “The car went along the Kurfürstendamm towards the center of Berlin. When it reached the canal, unknown persons shouted, ‘Halt!’ The driver, believing this was a patrol, obeyed. The crowd surrounded the car, shouting: ‘It’s Rosa!’ The body of Frau Rosa Luxemburg was snatched and dragged off into the dark.”

  The murdered woman’s remains were thrown in the canal.

  In all of contemporary history, which is not short of assorted horrors, there are few scenes so revolting as that of this bourgeois crowd, bent on lynching a prisoner, a white haired woman who had fainted, and who was one of the most powerful minds of world socialism. You would have to go back to the Paris Commune to find anything comparable. The women of Versailles59 used the tips of their parasols—doubtless with a little pout of disgust—to touch the bodies of those atrocious Communards. The Berliners of 1919 dragged Rosa Luxemburg’s body, still twitching with life, along the pavement to the canal.

  And the next day Vorwärts wrote: “Social democracy, despite all the aberrations of left and of right, is defending order, human life, the rule of law against force. That is what it is fighting for! No one should believe it can be disarmed!” In the very same issue we can pick out the following headlines and subheadings: “The end of Bolshevism”—“Petrograd at death’s door”—“Counter-revolution in Russia”—“Gorky reported to have fled to London.”

  Four years have gone by since then. Liebknecht’s chief assassin died accidentally. Rosa Luxemburg’s murderers are known but have not been prosecuted. One of them, Runge, confessed; he got six months in jail for being indiscreet. The gaoler Tamschick from the Moabit prison who killed Leo Tychko and then Dorrenbach60 was promoted.

  Four years have gone by. Now we have tasted the fruits of victory, won at this price by the German social democracy.

  Thanks to it, the proletarian revolution, which could have succeeded in central Germany, did not triumph. The likes of Stinnes, Thyssen, the aniline millionaires61 and those of many other industries enjoyed prosperity. Herr Cuno of the Hamburg-America Line is in power. />
  The Germany of the workers, which the SPD threatened with famine and blockade in 1919 if it dared to make its revolution, did not make its revolution and it is starving nonetheless. Germany of the workers, which Scheidemann and friends threatened with Allied intervention, is perhaps at this very moment seeing the Senegalese62 invade the Ruhr. Fascism is looming. Erzberger and Rathenau,63 leading bourgeois with mildly radical views, have been killed; Ludendorff is left in peace and Colonel Hitler is peacefully organizing his counter-revolutionary assault troops in Bavaria.

  “Order, respect for human life, rule of law, socialism” were the key themes of the social democrats during the days when Karl and Rosa died—a peculiar cynicism. Reality has other names: famine, colonization of Germany by foreign capital, triumph of large scale speculation, the rule of profiteers, the employers’ offensive, the arming of reactionary forces.

  As Communists, we do not look at history fatalistically. In the class struggle, there are no inevitable defeats or victories. Material, intellectual and moral forces come into conflict, and the stronger breaks the weaker. In January 1919, although in mortal danger, the Russian Revolution in its struggle with reaction reached the peak of its potential to expand and create. Hungary was progressing towards soviet rule. The revolutionary wave was rising in Italy. In the victorious states, demobilization had not been carried out: armed workers were returning from the trenches, scarcely restraining their powerful anger; everywhere the fearful, cowardly bourgeoisie which had stayed in the rear retreated before them. Proletarian Germany wanted to carry through its program of public ownership, to follow the great Russian example. It still had those four remarkable minds: Franz Mehring,64 a scholar and a bold thinker, the very heart of the Spartacus group; Leo Tychko (Jogisches), the best of organizers, the most skillful of conspirators; Karl and Rosa. Proletarian Germany could have won.

  The bourgeois and socialist counter-revolution struck down three of these thinkers; then old Franz Mehring died in the sudden dark despairing twilight of defeat. Social democracy understood only too well that a class that has been beheaded is halfway to defeat. Its killers finished off the work of demoralization that had been begun by the SPD’s treachery. If, instead of that, it had carried out its most elementary socialist duty, what a future would have been opened up to the working class of Europe—certainly after a hard struggle; but the bleak present serves only to delay and to prolong ! Let us think of this on the day of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. We must remember what the enemy is capable of. In the crime of January 15, 1919, there is a great historical lesson.

  On January 11 French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr, following the dispute about unpaid reparations. The German government launched a campaign of “passive resistance,” refusal to cooperate with the occupying forces. Meanwhile the French Communist Party, in association with the KPD, embarked on a major campaign of opposition to the occupation. The Ruhr crisis worsened Germany’s already difficult economic situation.

  News from Germany

  Correspondance internationale, February 9, 1923

  What is happening to German finances? An eminent economist who took on the job of predicting their development would be a brave man. Bankruptcy is a fact. Every day it is more ruinous, more complete. How far will it go?

  From January 17 to 23 (according to an official report) the national bank issued new banknotes to a value of 217,000,000,000 (nine zeros) marks. And at the beginning of February, large financial establishments in Berlin paid out no more than 150,000 marks, for paper money was in short supply!

  In recent days the issue of 50,000 mark notes has been announced, to be followed shortly by 100,000 mark notes.

  On January 23 there were in circulation banknotes for 1,654,600,000,000…—in words, one thousand six hundred and fifty-four billion…banknotes…

  The state presses are still functioning. And the most bald-headed statesmen are studying the problem of stabilizing the mark.

  The rise in prices or, more accurately, the automatic reduction of wages, continuing to infinity, naturally keeps step with the issuing of banknotes. Make your own judgment.

  On the evening of February 3, a pound65 of good quality butter cost 6,900 marks; on February 5, 7,200 marks. In the same period, second rate margarine, poor people’s butter, rose by 10 percent, from 4,200 to 4,500; potatoes went up 15 percent, from 26 marks a pound to 30; lard went from 6,000 to 7,200 marks per pound (20 percent); an egg from 380 to 420 marks (11 percent).

  It should be noted that it is the most commonly consumed items that are rising the fastest.

  Meanwhile, subsequent wage increases are under discussion. By the time they happen, prices will have doubled or tripled again.

  A hundred or so cases of poisoning from bad flour have been reported in the area surrounding Berlin, and several cases involving rotten horse meat. There have been several deaths. From these miscellaneous news items you can see how the poor of Germany are being fed.

  In January 116,574 homeless people, including 9,135 women, were accommodated in the Berlin night-shelters. In January last year, the number of Berlin homeless was only 78,263—an increase of 38,211 in one year. Who is paying the…reparations?

  We reported earlier the death of a Communist deputy in the Bavarian Landtag: Hagemeister, one of the courageous prisoners from the soviet revolution in Munich.66 He died on January 16 in the Niederschönenfeld fortress, where he was serving a long sentence of imprisonment with forced labor.

  The truth, which has been revealed by the Communist fraction in the Reichstag, is that Hagemeister died as a result of ill treatment. When he was sick he was refused medical assistance. He spent nights of despair, wholly isolated in his cell, suffering from a fever which alternately froze and burnt him. The prison administration knowingly left him to die, a doomed, defenseless class enemy.

  That is how people are put to death in the prisons of German democracy. We should note that the genuine death of Hagemeister caused much less stir in the European socialist press than the fictitious death67 of the Social Revolutionary Timofeyev in Moscow, not long ago…

  There is a fair amount of killing going on in the Ruhr. The poor wretches shot down by French and Belgian sentries—who have been brutalized by their vicious instructions—are now being counted by the dozen. At Düsseldorf a schoolboy was killed: perhaps he gave the troops in the square an impudent look. A little girl next to the murdered boy got a bullet in the stomach. M. Poincaré has called for the “peaceful (!) protection of his engineers.” He makes an ingenious use of euphemism. Basically he is simply treating the inhabitants of the Ruhr as he did the strikers of Le Havre.68 It’s his job. But when he faces a firing squad, he will have got what was coming to him.

  From July to December 1923 (with the exception of two weeks in August- September) Correspondance internationale carried a weekly column by “R. Albert” under the heading “Reports from Germany.” These columns are all reproduced here, together with a few additional pieces that appeared in the bi- weekly edition. The Ruhr occupation was still continuing, but the French and German ruling classes recognized that they had a common interest in restricting the development of working-class opposition.

  A Document on German Patriotism

  Correspondance internationale, July 1, 1923

  The Communist press in France and Germany has just been enriched by a contribution which was as valuable as it was unexpected. It came from Herr Lutterbeck, deputy to the chief district official of Düsseldorf, the author of a letter to General Denvignes,69 certain passages of which deserve to be preserved in the annals of working-class literature. This official from Düsseldorf is asking for the favor of assistance from the French commander in order to repress the working-class movement. It would be impossible for us to express better than he does the necessities and reasons for international capitalist solidarity. The recall of the events of 187170 takes on a very particular flavor when a senior Prussian civil servant is writing to one of Foch’s officers. We w
ill quote from the text:Events such as those at Gelsenkirchen are liable to encourage elements hostile to the state. Further disturbances will occur, and order, the necessary basis for civilization and production, risks being shaken for a long time to come.

  There would be great risks if France imagined that, in the present circumstances, it could easily re-establish the normal state of affairs. The industrial region is so complex that it is possible for a spark in one city to become a flame in another, and the flame will be such that the force of arms cannot control it, and that neither the Rhine nor the German frontier beyond the Rhine can stop it. This threat hangs over the whole world. And if the French command waits passively until the rising attacks it, then it will appear as if France wishes German authority to be shaken in the Ruhr at any price, even if it be the price of a rising which would threaten European civilization by putting the Ruhr in the hands of the rabble. This is a dangerous game for France itself. The army of occupation is not made up of inanimate material, rifles, machine-guns and tanks. The weapons are borne by men who have eyes and ears. There is a danger that they will carry from the Ruhr a seed destined to take root in French territory. In face of such dangers, may I take the liberty of stressing the heavy responsibility which would be incurred by the French command if it were to show itself as being indulgent in the face of anarchy. If it does not act itself, then at the very least its obligation is to leave the German authorities with their hands free in order to do their duty. Prime Minister Poincaré recently told a Socialist deputy called Auriol that incidents in the occupied territory are not inevitable, citing the precedent of 1871-72. At that time in France there were no conflicts in France between the population and the occupying forces. May I recall in this respect that at the time of the Paris Commune the German command did its best to anticipate the needs of the French authorities as far as repression was concerned. I am under an obligation to request you to observe a similar attitude if, in the future, dangerous clashes cannot be avoided.