The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Liebknecht, Karl

LIEBKNECHT, lēp'knĕht, Karl (Paul August Ferdinand), German Socialist leader: b. Leipzig, 13 Aug. 1871; d. 15 Jan. 1919. The eldest son of the famous Socialist, Wilhelm Liebknecht (q.v.), he was a lawyer by profession and, since 1912, a member of the Reichstag representing the constitutency wherein the ex-Kaiser resided — Potsdam. A fearless and outspoken critic of the government militarist policy, he came into frequent collisions with the authorities. He earned considerable notoriety by bringing grave charges of corruption against the Krupp firm at Essen, charging it with tampering with petty officials of the German War Office and Admiralty. He was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment in 1907 for publishing an anti-militaristic pamphlet, and in 1912 attacked the government for permitting the Tsar of Russia to visit Germany. He was the only member of the Reichstag to oppose the war, which he condemned with fiery eloquence from the beginning. Much has been written on the failure of the German Social Democratic party to live up to their principles in supporting the government policy of aggressive war. But it is only just to bear in mind that the storm fell upon the German Socialists as suddenly as upon France and England; they knew less of the causes of that storm than the French or British knew; like those two peoples, they saw that their country was in danger and resolved, as they also did, to subordinate everything to the pressing duty of saving it from ruin. The isolation of Liebknecht, therefore, was more apparent than real. Though he alone uttered his thoughts, they were shared by many of his colleagues. Early in the war he visited Belgium and explained to the Belgian Socialists that, although the vast majority of German Socialists were in favor of fighting the war to the bitter end, there were numerous representatives of the party in the Reichstag who maintained that the misguided foreign policy of their country had been largely responsible for the war. When Liebknecht's father and August Bebel (q.v.) resisted in the Reichstag the proposal in 1870 to annex Alsace-Lorraine, both were thrown into prison. Karl went much further than his father. It was he, who, when the German press was fanning the flame of hatred against the Belgians by stories of atrocities committed against German soldiers, hunted the stories to their source in hospitals and elsewhere, proved them to be baseless and denounced them as such in Vorwärts. On 2 Dec. 1914, while those of his fellow Socialists who opposed the war walked out of the Reichstag while the credits were voted, Liebknecht remained to utter his protest. The president would not allow him to speak and when he handed in his speech in writing the president refused to insert it in the records. In that undelivered speech, later published in England, he denounced the war as having been “prepared by the German and Austrian war parties” and wound up with a scathing indictment of the violation of Belgium and Luxemburg. In March 1915 he spoke against the government repudiation of its promise to abolish the property suffrage in Prussia, but the Diet fled at his rising. With the death of Bebel in 1913 Liebknecht became the foremost figure in the most powerful party in Germany, his opinions uncompromising, his honesty unquestioned, his courage equal to any occasion. In June 1916 he was charged with attempted high treason and sentenced to 30 months' imprisonment. He had been expelled from his party five months earlier by a vote of 60 against 25; he was now dismissed from the army, in which he was serving as a private. He was liberated in November 1918. In the same month a volume of his speeches was published in New York entitled ‘The Future belongs to the People.’ Liebknecht led the radical Spartacus group against the Ebert government during the disorders following on the Kaiser's flight. He was arrested and later shot down by a soldier on the alleged grounds of attempting to escape.