Comrade and Lover: Rosa Luxemburg's Letters to Leo Jogiches

by Rosa Luxemburg

A revolutionary, a Marxist, and one of the leaders of the world socialist movement, Rosa Luxemburg fought for social justice and for the man she loved with equal passion and determination. This skillful and sensitive translation of her letters to Leo Jogiches reveals an affair which came to be seen as "the greatest and most tragic love story of Socialism." Leo Jogiches was Luxemburg's political alter ego and the only man she loved and admired. They first met in 1890 when they were both students at the Zurich University, and together they founded the first important Polish Marxist workers' party—the antecedent of Poland's contemporary ruling party. Comrade and Lover reveals that, unlike Golda Meir or Indira Gandhi whose political careers took precedence over their personal lives, Rosa Luxemburg would not choose one over the other—love and work were inseparable in her life. These letters reveal a fascinating woman, one who was moody and passionate, proud and independent, who struggled to reconcile her political career with her wish to have a child and a quiet, peaceful homelife with Jogiches. Rosa Luxemburg wrote nearly a thousand letters to Leo Jogiches between 1893 and 1914, but they were kept from scholars and the public for several decades in the Marx-Lenin Institute in Moscow. This selection marks their first translation from Polish into English.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Germany, Politics

206 pages, Paperback

Published August 27, 1981

About the author

Rosa Luxemburg (Rosalia Luxemburg, Polish: Róża Luksemburg) was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist and activist of Polish Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen. She was successively a member of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Social Democratic Party of Germany(SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party of Germany.

In 1915, after the SPD supported German involvement in World War I, she co-founded, with Karl Liebknecht, the anti-war Spartakusbund (Spartacist League). On 1 January 1919 the Spartacist League became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In November 1918, during the German Revolution she founded the Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag), the central organ of the Spartacist movement.

She regarded the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 in Berlin as a blunder, but supported it after Liebknecht ordered it without her knowledge. When the revolt was crushed by the social democrat government and the Freikorps (WWI veterans defending the Weimar Republic), Luxemburg, Liebknecht and some of their supporters were captured and murdered. Luxemburg was drowned in the Landwehr Canal in Berlin. After their deaths, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht became martyrs for Marxists. According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, commemoration of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht continues to play an important role among the German far-left.

Reviews

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

No revolutionary of the twentieth century, not even Lenin, devoted herself or himself to revolution like "Red" Rosa Luxemburg. The cliche about the letters of Marxist leaders is that "they reveal the human side of the public person", but that is true of anybody. These letters by Luxemburg to her lover and fellow German Social Democrat leader Leo Jogiches do indeed address everyday concerns, housekeeping, the pair kept a maid, most unusual for Marxists, dress, budgets, but strangely not the ingredients which Rosa said made up her quotidian life, "books, sex, music, and writing". These letters record a hausfrau, and a frustrated one at that, without offering any glimpses of the Marxist master thinker and fierce polemicist. Where's the inner fire that burned through her life, and death?

[kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up because it happened to be in my house (D. was reading it for a book club) but tbh I don't think I had enough context for it (having never heard of either Luxemburg or Jogiches). A few interesting lines but mostly it was either "ugh, this relationship seems exhausting and borderline abusive" or "cool, another long list of daily happenings and grievances that don't even seem like they'd be that interesting if I understood the political backdrop."

[Kassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important primary source material about one of the most important (and under-appreciated) historical figures of the early 20th century. Particularly valuable for the ways in which the political and personal are intertwined. Yet in comparing it to some other compilations of Luxemburg's letters that do not focus solely on her relationship with Leo Jogiches (e.g., the recent one edited by Peter Hudis), it becomes clear that the editor of this collection made some curious abridgments to some of the letters. For a better sense of the fullness of Rosa Luxemburg as politician, theorist and woman, go to the Hudis collection instead. (Or, if you are blessed with the ability to read both German and Polish, the originals!)

[Chelsea Szendi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weibliches, Allzuweibliches...

These collected, translated, and annotated letters from Rosa Luxemburg to her "comrade and lover" add to the allure of Rosa as one of the most human of turn-of-the-century revolutionaries. She worries about money and frets about making a comfortable home; she gets frustrated with her lover's edits to her dissertation. She worries about being too much, and too inconveniently, a woman:

"It's too painful to think that I invaded your pure, proud, lonely life with my female whims, my unevenness, my helplessness."

[Athena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is strictly for those who, like me, have nursed a longtime fascination with the life of Rosa Luxemburg, not for those who are only interested in her ideas. The letters are fairly short and, because one-sided, don't reveal much about how Luxemburg's ideas evolved in conversation with Leo Jogiches. They do, however, suggest that Jogiches was a bit of an asshole, and that Luxemburg was unabashedly into bourgeois things like smart dresses and dinner parties.

[Kate Savage · Rating 4 out of 5]

The letters are astonishing.

Equally astonishing is that everyone always speaks of this relationship as "a love story," rather than a story of male jealousy, threats and abuse. Luxemburg carried around a pistol after she left Jogiches, because he was threatening to kill her. That ain't love.

[Yagmur Zafer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started to know Rosa with this book and I wish I could read the letters of Jogiches!