In Honor of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (1871 – 1919)
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.