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Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (German: [ˈliːpknɛçt] ; 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German socialist and anti-militarist. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) beginning in 1900, he was one of its deputies in the Reichstag from 1912 to 1916, where he represented the left-revolutionary wing of the party. In 1916 he was expelled from the SPD's parliamentary group for his opposition to the Burgfriedenspolitik, the political truce between all parties in the Reichstag while the war lasted. He twice spent time in prison, first for writing an anti-militarism pamphlet in 1907 and then for his role in a 1916 antiwar demonstration. He was released from the second under a general amnesty three weeks before the end of the First World War. During the November Revolution that broke out across Germany in the final days of the war, Liebknecht proclaimed Germany a "Free Socialist Republic" from the Berlin Palace on 9 November 1918. On 11 November, together with Rosa Luxemburg and others he founded the Spartacist League. In December, his call to make Germany a soviet republic was rejected by the majority of the Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils (Reichsrätekongress). At the end of 1918, Liebknecht was one of the founders of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Shortly after the suppression of the Spartacist uprising in which he played a leading role, he and Rosa Luxemburg were killed by members of the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division after they had consulted with Gustav Noske, who was a member of the Council of the People's Deputies, Germany's interim government, and had responsibility for military affairs. Although two of the men directly involved in the murders were prosecuted, no one responsible for ordering their deaths was ever brought to trial. After their deaths, both Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg became martyrs for the socialist cause in Germany and throughout Europe. Commemoration of the two continues to play an important role among the German left to this day. Life Background Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht was born in Leipzig in 1871, the second of the five sons of Wilhelm Liebknecht and his second wife Natalie (née Reh). His father, along with August Bebel, was one of the founders and key leaders of the SPD and its precursor parties. Karl was baptized a Lutheran in St. Thomas Church. According to the Liebknecht family tradition, their lineage was directly descended from the theologian and founder of Reformation, Martin Luther. His godparents included Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who were not present at the baptism but had written declarations of their godparenthood. As a child in the early 1880s, Liebknecht lived in Borsdorf, now located on the eastern outskirts of Leipzig. His father had moved into a suburban villa there with August Bebel after they were expelled from Leipzig under the 'Lesser State of Siege', a provision of the Anti-Socialist Laws directed against socialist, social democratic and communist associations and writings. The laws were in force from 1878 to 1890. Studies In 1890 he graduated from the Alte Nikolaischule in Leipzig and on 16 August 1890 began studying law and administrative (cameral) sciences at Leipzig University. He studied there with jurist Bernhard Windscheid, jurist and theologian Rudolph Sohm, economist Lujo Brentano, psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, and art historian Anton Springer. When the family moved to Berlin in October 1890, he continued his studies at the Friedrich Wilhelm University (now the Humboldt University of Berlin), where he attended lectures by historian Heinrich von Treitschke and economist Gustav Schmoller. His certificate of academic completion is dated 7 March 1893. On 29 May 1893, he passed his examination for higher civil service posts (Referendarexamen). Liebknecht then did his military service as a one-year volunteer with the Guard Pioneer Battalion, a unit of the Prussian Army, in Berlin in 1893 and 1894. After a long search for a position, he wrote his doctoral thesis "Compensation Enforcement and Compensation Pleas According to Common Law" (Compensationsvollzug und Compensationsvorbringen nach gemeinem Rechte), which was awarded a magna cum laude by the Law and Political Science Faculty of the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg in 1897. On 5 April 1899 he passed the examination for candidates to the higher civil service career path with a "good". Legal career With his brother Theodor and the socialist and Zionist Oskar Cohn, he opened a law office in Berlin in 1899. In May of the following year he married Julia Paradies, with whom he had two sons, Wilhelm and Robert, and a daughter Vera. He joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1900 and in 1904, along with his colleague Hugo Haase, he became known abroad as a political lawyer when he defended nine Social Democrats, among them the Pole Franciszek Trąbalski, in the Königsberg Secret Society trial. In other high profile criminal trials, he denounced the class-based justice of the empire and the brutal treatment of recruits in the military. Treason trial From 1907 to 1910 Liebknecht was president of the International Union of Socialist Youth, where he frequently spoke out against militarism. In 1907 he published Militarism and Anti-Militarism as part of the SPD Youth. In the work he argued that against an external enemy, external militarism required chauvinistic obstinacy, and against an internal enemy, internal militarism required a lack of understanding or hatred of any progressive movement. Militarism also needed an impassive people so that the masses could be driven like a herd of cattle. Anti-militarist agitation, he said, must educate about the dangers of militarism, but it must do so within the framework of the law – a statement that the Reich Court of Justice did not accept when Liebknecht was brought to trial for treason. He characterized the spirit of militarism with a reference to a remark by the Prussian Minister of War at the time, General Karl von Einem, according to whom a soldier loyal to the king who shoots badly is preferable to one who shoots well but whose political convictions are questionable. On 17 April 1907 von Einem asked the Reich Prosecutor's Office to initiate criminal proceedings against Liebknecht on account of the pamphlet. The treason trial against Liebknecht took place before the Reich Court of Justice, presided over by Judge Ludwig Treplin, on 9, 10 and 12 October 1907, with a large public presence. On the first day of the trial, Liebknecht said that imperial orders were null and void if their purpose was a breach of the constitution. (In the court's final ruling, it emphasized that the soldiers' unconditional duty of obedience to the emperor was a central provision of the constitution of the empire.) When Liebknecht responded to a question from the presiding judge by saying that various newspapers as well as the conservative politician Elard von Oldenburg-.... Discover the Klaus Gietinger popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Klaus Gietinger books.