Nearly one hundred years ago, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (both born in 1871, the year of the Paris Commune) were arrested and executed by ultranationalist members of the Freikorps during the early morning hours of January 15, 1919. The poem below was written by the German poet Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810 – 1876) in 1851. Freiligrath was a close friend of Karl Marx. Rosa Luxemburg ended her last known written article ‘Order Reigns in Berlin’, published in The Red Flag on the same day, with the words“Ich war, Ich bin, Ich werde sein” (“I was, I am, I shall be”) taken from this poem.
This translation is by the English socialist J. L. Joynes, who was a member of the Social Democratic Federation. The diction of the poem is old fashioned but the spirit is up to date. Those familiar with the Psalms will note Freiligrath’s references to Psalm 137, which begins: “By the rivers of Babylon . . .”
Luxemburg is known for her active support of the German and Russian revolutions, though she dissented sharply against Lenin’s centralism and party dictatorship. Indeed, she was a socialist in the radical republication tradition, and demanded both personal and public freedom. Both Luxemburg and Liebknecht opposed World War I, and were jailed in consequence. For similar war resistance, Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party was also jailed in the United States.
Luxemburg and Liebknecht were freed in the wake of the German Revolution and spent their last weeks writing, organizing, and finally hiding from the far right paramilitary squads. Each January, there is a large march of German socialists to a memorial site dedicated to Luxemburg, Liebknecht and other comrades.
Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, spoke more plainly about labor and capital in Congress in the mid-nineteenth century than most career politicians dare to do in the same place today. The good news is that a few socialists have been elected to Congress, and there is a much wider public conversation about democracy and socialism throughout the whole country. Whether the Democratic Party can become a party of democratic socialism I will just leave as an open question here. I’ve said and written plenty on that subject elsewhere.
Solidarity – Scott Tucker
Revolution
by Ferdinand Freiligrath
And though ye bind your noble prey in thongs and fetters hard and fast,
And though ye lead her out to die beneath the fortress wall at last,
And though she lie beneath the sod, whose fair green grass at dawning red
The peasant girl with roses decks, — I tell ye all, she is not dead!
And though ye rob her forehead high of all its locks of floating hair,
And choose the murderer and the thief your dungeon-den with her to share;
Though she has donned your prison dress, and ta’en the food your gaoler gave;
And though she now your oakum picks, — I tell ye, she is not your slave!
And though ye hunt her from her home, and drive her out to distant lands,
And though she seeks a stranger’s hearth, and mutely by its ashes stands,
And though she bathes by unknown streams feet sore with stones and splinters sharp,
She ne’er will deign on foreign trees to hang on high her sacred harp.
Ah no— she sets it at her side, and proudly strikes a strain of hope;
She laughs her exiled state to scorn, as she has laughed to scorn the rope;
She chants a song whereat ye all spring to your feet in evil cheer,
That sets your hearts — your coward hearts — your traitor hearts — athrob with fear.
No strain is hers of grief and tears, nor e’en regret for those that died;
Far less a song of keen contempt for that hypocrisy of pride,
Your Beggar’s Opera, in whose scenes ye well know how to prance and prate,
How smirched soe’er your purple be, how rotten all your robes of state.
Nay, what she sings by foreign streams is not the shame of folk forlorn;
‘Tis song that triumphs o’er defeat, and hails the future’s mighty morn.
Bright dawns her day: she speaks but that her fierce prophetic eyes can see,
Of days to come, as erst your God: “I was, I am, and aye shall be!
“Yea, yet shall be, and once again before my People I shall go,
Shall plant my foot upon your necks, and lay your thrones and kingdoms low;
Shall free the slave, and right the wrong, with sword unsheathed and flag unfurled,
And strong with outstretched arm of might cry Freedom’s birth to all the world.
“Ye see me in the poor man’s hut, ye see me in the dungeon den,
Or wandering on the thorny path of exile among unkind men;
Ye fools! a dwelling-place is mine wherein the tyrant hath no part,
A kingdom in the brave man’s brow, a home in every noble heart.
“In hearts that know not how to bend, that cannot cringe, and dare not lie,
That beat in sacred sympathy with all that suffer and that die,
In every hut where workers toil, and men for freedom strive and strain,
There, there I hold eternal right with undisputed sway to reign.
“Day dawns apace; yet once again before my People I shall go,
Shall plant my foot upon your necks, and lay your crowns and kingdoms low.
‘Tis no mere threat; the words ye hear are writ by Fate with iron hand —
This sultry noon! — Yet, while I sing, free breezes cool this foreign land.”