Germany
Rosa Luxemburg
1871–1919 Revolutionary socialist; co-founder of the Spartacus League, 1914–1919
Born in Russian-ruled Poland, Luxemburg became the leading voice of the revolutionary wing of Germany's Social Democratic Party. When its Reichstag delegation voted for war credits on 4 August 1914, she and Karl Liebknecht organized an opposition that became the Spartacus League. She spent most of the war in prison, and her Junius Pamphlet (1916), published under a pseudonym, condemned the party's war policy as a betrayal and posed the choice of socialism or barbarism. Released on 9 November 1918, she helped found the Communist Party of Germany at the turn of the year. After the January 1919 Berlin uprising she and Liebknecht were arrested on 15 January, taken to the Guards Cavalry Rifle Division's headquarters and murdered; her body was found in the Landwehr Canal on 31 May.