Spartacus League

The Spartacus League (German: Spartakusbund) was a Marxist revolutionary movement in Germany during World War I. The League was named after Spartacus, leader of the largest slave rebellion of the Roman Republic. Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, and others started the group. The League later changed its name to the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD). It joined the Comintern in 1919. It was most active during the German Revolution of 1918. The League wanted to start a revolution through its newspaper, Spartacus Letters.

Well-known members

Leo Jogiches Paul Levi Karl Liebknecht Rosa Luxemburg Julian Marchlewski

Ernst Meyer Franz Mehring Wilhelm Pieck August Thalheimer Bertha Thalheimer Clara Zetkin

Spartacus League Media

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  Portrait photography. Depicted person: Rosa Luxemburg – German-Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary, editor (1871–1919)

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  Clara Zetkin (left) with Rosa Luxemburg in 1910.

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  Karl Liebknecht

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  Philipp Scheidemann proclaiming the German Republic from a window of the Reichstag building.

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  • For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme.
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  Deckblatt und Logo der "Roten Fahne" vom 23. November 1918

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  Poster urging people to join the KPD (Spartacus League). The figure addressing the crowd is Karl Liebknecht.

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  Anti-Spartacus poster. It reads: "Spartacus at work… Association for Combating Bolshevism".