A Woman’s Place Is in the Revolution
Rosa Luxemburg is rightly recognized for her enormous contributions to the international socialist movement. Yet the pivotal role that many other women played in the German Revolution is all too often ignored.
Clara Zetkin speaking before a group of women, Sheet 4 from the Clara Zetkin cycle 1960.Robert Diedrichs / Wikimedia
It’s easy to imagine the stereotypical revolutionary as a man clutching a gun or raising a fist. Yet revolutions are something bigger than this. For a revolution to be sustained it requires a mass of people and a huge, often hidden infrastructure to supply and maintain it. The popular image of the revolutionary masks the diversity of people and roles that revolutions actually require.
The German Revolution of 1918–19 is no different. Much of our existing knowledge has focused on the leading figures, many of whom were men. If Rosa Luxemburg is often included as a counterexample of a woman revolutionary, the much wider role played by women largely remains in the shadows. Ignoring their participation distorts our own understanding of a watershed moment of German democracy. Yet today, research is seeking to put women back into this history.
Against the Carnage
When war broke out in 1914, women and men across Germany were often conflicted about how to respond. If it is often said that outbreak of war in August 1914 was greeted with great enthusiasm, in fact it is difficult to read popular attitudes. In July 1914, more Germans marched in peace demonstrations than in the highly publicized patriotic rallies in support of the war. In the week preceding the mobilization, a total of 750,000 people attended thirty-two peace rallies held in towns and cities across Germany — 100,000 in Berlin alone. These echoed similar mass rallies in France and later in London, showing how many citizens of belligerent nations wanted to find ways of preventing the war while this was still possible.
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