Socialism | Rosa Luxemburg's final resting place is a place of democracy

During the Luxemburg Liebknecht Honor in January 2025 Photo: dpa/Sebastian Gollnow The National Theater in Weimar was the birthplace of the Weimar Republic in 1919 and is therefore just as recognized as a place of democracy as the childhood home of the socialist Clara Zetkin in Wiederau, Saxony. In Berlin, Alexanderplatz is a place of democracy because it saw street fighting during the revolution of 1848 and on November 4, 1989 a peaceful demonstration for freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of travel and assembly as well as for free elections. This rally, which was broadcast live on television, had an estimated half a million to a million participants.

A federal foundation awards plaques that mark places in Germany where democracy was won, defended, demanded or shaped. In the capital there are such plaques, among others, for the Lette House, where the founding of the Federation of German Women's Associations was decided in March 1894, and for Schönhausen Palace, where the Central Round Table of the GDR met from the end of December 1989. Now the socialist memorial located in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery will also receive such a plaque next Monday. It will be unveiled at the gate in the afternoon. Speeches by district mayor Martin Schaefer (CDU) and environmental councilor Filiz Keküllüoğlu (Greens) have been announced.

The memorial site of the German workers' movement is already listed as such in an interactive map of the places of democracy. The accompanying text states that the cemetery in Friedrichsfelde, which opened in May 1881, has developed into the preferred burial place of leading representatives of the German labor movement since the burial of the SPD founding father Wilhelm Liebknecht in 1900. At the time, 150,000 people joined the funeral procession. On January 15, 1919, Wilhelm Liebknecht's son Karl Liebknecht was murdered by right-wing Freikorps soldiers. When he was buried ten days later in Friedrichsfelde, 100,000 people followed his coffin. In June of that year, another 100,000 mourners came to the funeral of Rosa Luxemburg, whose body, which had been thrown into the Landwehr Canal, had not yet been discovered in January. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg founded the KPD at the turn of the year. According to the explanatory text, it is also about "stimulating a critical examination of the GDR's ideological self-image and its impact on the memory of the workers' movement."

The tradition of the annual Liebknecht Luxembourg honor did not break in the 1990s and 2000s. Back then, 100,000 people repeatedly flocked to the Socialist Memorial to lay red carnations. A news agency used exactly the same sentence in its reports for years: in the GDR this commemoration had "frozen into a ritual."

But it couldn't have been completely frozen. In January 1988, GDR opposition members referred to a sentence that Rosa Luxemburg had doubtfully written with regard to the Russian Revolution: freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently. The opposition members now made their own banners for the Liebknecht Luxembourg honor - and were arrested. Vera Lengsfeld was convicted and deported to the West. She was then a member of the Bundestag for the Green Party from 1990, switched to the CDU in 1996 and remained in parliament until 2005.

Today Lengsfeld is in the orbit of the AfD. On her website, the 74-year-old warns of a red-green-red coalition in the Berlin House of Representatives. There are “difficult times ahead for Germany,” she writes. "Preparations are currently underway to bring the French riots to Germany." The police are preparing for riots that will be as certain as the Amen in church. "The accelerant is already ready in Berlin with the help of the SPD and the Greens."

Meanwhile, the LL-Demo alliance is planning its Liebknecht-Luxemburg demonstration for January 10, 2027 from the Frankfurter Tor subway station to the Socialist Memorial. “We will peacefully express our positions and demands on January 10, 2027 in memory of Rosa and Karl,” says the call that has already been published. The alliance is keeping an eye on the permanent construction site on the cemetery forecourt, which endangered and hindered the demonstration in January 2025 and 2026, but did not prevent it.

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