Spartacus League founded

Named for the Thracian slave leader Spartacus, the „Spartacus League“ is founded on 27 January 1916. This group of radical Marxists under the leadership of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Wilhelm Pieck, and Clara Zetkin calls for „international class struggle against war to compel peace through the will of the masses“. From that time on, the organisation propagates its political goals in illegal „letters of the Spartacus League“. In association with Russian representatives Leon D. Trotsky, Vladimir I. Lenin, and Karl Radek living in Swiss exile, the Spartacus League constitutes the Socialist International’s left-wing opposition. The League remains restricted to a small group of intellectuals and is absorbed, on 1&nsp;January 1919, into the newly founded Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

© Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin Contemporary placard illustrating the main goals of the Spartacus League: combat of militarism and capitalism and deprive the country squires of power