Spartacist Uprising (1919): Communist Revolt in Berlin

The Spartacist Uprising, also known as the January Uprising, was an armed revolt in Berlin from 5 to 12 January 1919 by radical socialists and the newly founded Communist Party of Germany against the provisional Social Democratic government of Friedrich Ebert. It was crushed within a week by army units and right-wing Freikorps volunteers. Its best-known victims, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, were murdered after their capture, and the violence left a lasting split in the German left.

Background: a divided revolution

The German revolution of November 1918 brought down the monarchy and put the moderate Social Democrats (SPD) under Ebert in power. Ebert wanted elections to a national assembly and a parliamentary republic. To his left, the Independent Social Democrats (USPD) and the smaller Spartacus League, led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, wanted a socialist republic based on workers’ and soldiers’ councils, inspired in part by the October Revolution in Russia.

At first the SPD and the USPD shared power in a six-man Council of People’s Deputies. A national congress of workers’ and soldiers’ councils, meeting in Berlin in mid-December 1918, voted by a large majority for elections to a National Assembly, a defeat for those who wanted the councils to hold power permanently. Liebknecht and Luxemburg had not even been admitted as delegates.

Tension grew through December 1918. Ebert relied on the old army command to keep order, and on 24 December army troops clashed with a mutinous sailors’ unit in central Berlin. The USPD left the government in protest. At the turn of the year the Spartacus League and other radicals founded the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which voted, against Luxemburg’s advice, to boycott the coming elections.

The uprising

The spark was the dismissal on 4 January 1919 of Berlin’s police president, Emil Eichhorn, a member of the USPD who refused to leave office. On 5 January the USPD, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the KPD called a protest that brought huge crowds into central Berlin. Armed groups occupied the newspaper district, including the building of Vorwarts, the SPD’s newspaper, and other publishing houses and the main telegraph office.

That evening a Revolutionary Committee, including Liebknecht, declared the Ebert government deposed. But the rising had no clear plan, and its leaders spent days in fruitless debate and negotiation while the occupiers waited. Luxemburg had doubts about the timing but supported the revolt in the party newspaper.

Ebert appointed Gustav Noske, an SPD politician, to command the government’s forces. Noske assembled loyal army units and Freikorps, volunteer formations largely led by former officers and hostile to socialism. On 11 January troops used artillery and machine guns to retake the Vorwarts building; several men who had come out to negotiate a surrender were shot. By 12 January the last strongholds, including the police headquarters, had fallen. Estimates of the dead usually range from about 150 to 200.

The murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht

Luxemburg and Liebknecht went into hiding in Berlin. On 14 January Luxemburg’s last article appeared, titled “Order prevails in Berlin”. The next evening both were arrested and taken to the Eden Hotel, the headquarters of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division under Captain Waldemar Pabst. That night soldiers beat them and shot them dead. Officials claimed Liebknecht had been shot while trying to escape and that Luxemburg had been killed by a crowd. Her body was thrown into the Landwehr Canal and recovered only on 31 May 1919.

A military court later gave the accused lenient sentences, and one officer escaped abroad with outside help. Decades afterwards Pabst openly admitted ordering the killings.

Key people

• Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919): Marxist theorist and co-founder of the Spartacus League and the KPD.
• Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919): socialist politician, the only Reichstag member to vote against war credits in December 1914.
• Friedrich Ebert (1871–1925): SPD leader and head of the provisional government.
• Gustav Noske (1868–1946): SPD politician who directed the suppression of the rising.
• Waldemar Pabst (1880–1970): staff officer of the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division.

Consequences

The defeat cleared the way for the National Assembly election of 19 January 1919 and the founding of the Weimar Republic. It also deepened the hostility between Social Democrats and Communists, who held the SPD responsible for the murders. The government’s dependence on Freikorps strengthened armed right-wing forces that later turned against the republic, for example in the Kapp Putsch of 1920. Fighting resumed in Berlin in March 1919, at much greater cost in lives.

Timeline

• 1918, 9 November: A republic is proclaimed in Berlin.
• 1918, 30 December - 1919, 1 January: The Communist Party of Germany is founded.
• 1919, 4 January: Police president Emil Eichhorn is dismissed.
• 1919, 5 January: Mass demonstrations; armed groups occupy the newspaper district.
• 1919, 11 January: Government troops storm the Vorwarts building.
• 1919, 12 January: The last insurgent positions fall.
• 1919, 15 January: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht are murdered.
• 1919, 19 January: Germany elects its National Assembly.

Why it matters

The Spartacist Uprising decided that Germany would become a parliamentary republic rather than a council state, but at a high price. The murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht made them martyrs for the left, and the bitterness between Social Democrats and Communists weakened the opposition to Nazism in the early 1930s.