Kollwitz, Kathe (German, 1867-1945) DER TRAUERNDE - GEDENKENBLATT FUR KARL LIEBKNECHT, 1919. Etching, aquatint, sandpaper, reservage and soft ground on laid paper. A Von Der Becke printing, with his blindstamp "A V Becke/Munchen 22." Unsigned. 10 1/4 x 6 1/4 inches (plate); 20 7/8 x 15 inches (sheet). A puncture in the sheet in the margin, lower right, and a light scratch to the sheet in the margin, upper center, both well away from the image, else in very good condition.Karl Liebknecht, along with Rosa Luxemburg was aleading Socialist politician in Germany during and after WWI. With Luxemburg and others, Liebknecht was instrumental in the January 1919 Spartacist uprising in Berlin. The uprising was brutally opposed by the new German government under Friedrich Ebert with the help of the remnants of the Imperial German Army and militias called the Freikorps. By 13 January, the uprising had been extinguished. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were captured by Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division troops on 15 January 1919 and brought to the Eden Hotel in Berlin, where they were tortured and interrogated for several hours. Following this, Luxemburg was beaten with rifle butts and afterwards shot and her corpse thrown into the Landwehr Canal while Liebknecht was forced to step out of the car in which he was being transported and was then shot in the back. Official declarations said he had been shot in an attempt to escape. Although the circumstances were disputed by the perpetrators at the time, the Freikorps commander, Captain Waldemar Pabst, later claimed: "I had them executed". (Quoted from Wikipedia).LegacyMemorial for Karl Liebknecht by Käthe Kollwitz (1919)Clara Zetkin penned an obituary for Liebknecht in September 1919[21] and together with Rosa Luxemburg he became a celebrated martyr of the German left.[22] The artist Käthe Kollwitz depicted his lying in state in the work Memorial for Karl Liebknecht.[23] In 1930, the Soviet government renamed a village near Kursk in central Russia after him, Imeni Karla Libknekhta. Since 1919, an annual Liebknecht-Luxemburg Demonstration has been held in Berlin,[24] the world's largest funerary parade and the biggest meeting of the German left. The annual L-L Demo is held on the second Sunday in January to this day[25] and 14,000 people attended the rally in Liebknecht and Luxemburg's honor in 2016.[26]
