The history of communism in Germany spans from the mid-19th century to the present day, encompassing revolutionary movements, political parties, and governing regimes. Its roots lie in the radical wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which, under the influence of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels grew into the world's largest and most influential socialist party before World War I. The SPD's support for the war in 1914 caused a decisive split that led first to the formation of Spartacus League and ultimately to the founding of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in December 1918.
During the Weimar Republic, the KPD was the largest communist party in Europe outside the Soviet Union, polling consistently between 10 and 16 percent of the national vote.Ralf Hoffrogge / Norman LaPorte (eds.): Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933, London: Lawrence & Wishart, p. 2 Its refusal to form a united front with the SPD against the rising Nazi Party, based on the Comintern doctrine of social fascism, is widely regarded as a catastrophic strategic failure that contributed to Adolf Hitler's ascent to power. After the Machtergreifung in 1933, the KPD was banned and brutally suppressed, with tens of thousands of its members executed or imprisoned.
Following World War II, Germany was divided along ideological lines. In the Soviet occupation zone, the KPD was forcibly merged with the SPD to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which ruled the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) as a one-party Marxist–Leninist state from 1949 until the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. In West Germany, the KPD was banned again in 1956; and a successor party, the German Communist Party (DKP), was founded in 1968, remaining a marginal fringe party throughout its existence. Since German reunification, the communist legacy has been carried forward primarily by Die Linke, a party formed in 2007 by a merger of the post-SED PDS and the western WASG.
Origins: the workers' movement and the SPD Early workers' organizations (1860s) The intellectual foundations of German communism lay in the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (both German-born). Their work, The Communist Manifesto was first published in German in February 1848, and provided the theoretical basis for revolutionary socialism worldwide. The organized working-class movement emerged in the 1860s out of workers' educational associations () that had initially been non-political; drawing together artisans, liberal intellectuals, and industrialists. August Bebel, a turner who would eventually lead the socialist movement, first attended such an association in 1861.
In 1863, Ferdinand Lassalle split off to form the first independent workers' party, the (ADAV, General German Workers' Association), which advocated for direct manhood suffrage and furthered his theory of the "iron law of wages". Wilhelm Liebknecht, a veteran of the Revolutions of 1848 and a close associate of Marx and Engels', initially joined the ADAV. Liebknecht failed to win supporters to his position so entered the educational societies instead. A major point of dispute was the German question: The Lassalleans favored a Prussian-led "lesser" German unification, while Marx, maintaining contact through Liebknecht, advocated for a more democratic "greater" German republic united with Austria by a people's militia.
In 1869, supporters of August Bebel supporters gathered in Eisenach and founded the (SDAP, Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany), also known as the "Eisenachers," which was aligned with the International Workingmen's Association. The SDAP merged with the Lassallean ADAV at Gotha in 1875, forming the (SAP), later renamed the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1890. Karl Marx sharply criticised the compromise program agreed at Gotha in his Critique of the Gotha Program.
The SPD under Bismarck and the Erfurt Program
In 1878, Otto von Bismarck passed the Anti-Socialist Laws which outlawed the SPD until 1890. The SPD later referred to this period as its "heroic period," as membership and support grew steadily despite repression from the German Empire. After being legalised in 1890 and gaining seats in the 1890 German federal election, the party adopted the Marxist Erfurt Program in 1891. In 1891 the party officially became a Marxist party, to the satisfaction of the ageing Engels. Eduard Bernstein's revisionist arguments of the late 1890s held that socialist goals were achievable through reform rather than revolution. This revision marked the beginning of a permanent tension between the party's radical and reformist wings. Rosa Luxemburg attacked Bernstein's revisionism in her pamphlet Social Reform or Revolution, and his program was not adopted by the party.
By 1912, the SPD was the strongest party in the Reichstag, with over a million members and being considered the most successful socialist party at the time. The party, despite its revolutionary program, had in practice become reformist. They had managed to achieve tangible improvements in wages, working conditions, social insurance, and democratic rights through parliamentary and municipal action. The left wing, then led by figures such as Luxemburg and Wilhelm's son, Karl Liebknecht, maintained a more uncompromising internationalist position and grew increasingly estranged from the party's mainstream.
The 1914 split Conservative elites were concerned by the growth of the SPD, especially after it won 35 percent of the national vote in the 1912 German federal election. The outbreak of World War I was a decisive turning point for the SPD. On 4 August 1914, the SPD's Reichstag group voted to support the war and the Burgfriedenspolitik was formed, a political truce under which the parties agreed to support the war and not criticise the government. Karl Liebknecht, despite being an antimilitarist, initially voted with the party in solidarity. Liebknecht broke ranks in December 1914 and voted against war credits, the first Reichstag deputy to do so.
Immediately following the 4 August vote, Rosa Luxemburg convened a meeting at her Berlin apartment with six trusted opponents of the war, including Hugo Eberlein, Wilhelm Pieck, Franz Mehring, and Ernst Meyer. This gathering formed the nucleus of the International Group (Gruppe Internationale), the forerunner of the Spartacus League. This group saw the SPD's approval of war credits as a betrayal of international proletarian solidarity and continued to organise anti-war activity within the party. Those who opposed the war, including Luxemburg, Liebknecht, and Hugo Haase, were eventually expelled from the SPD in 1917 and formed the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD).
The Spartacus League
Formation and activity In 1916, the International Group renamed itself the Spartacus Group, and circulated illegal Spartacus Letters that detailed its anti-war program and being the origin for its name, evoking Spartacus, leader of the great slave rebellion against the Roman Republic. Karl Liebknecht was expelled from the SPD in January 1916 for his dissent; Otto Rühle resigned in solidarity. In April 1917, the Spartacus Group joined the newly formed USPD as an autonomous closed propaganda association, retaining its distinct identity while attempting to radicalise the USPD from within.
Rosa Luxemburg, writing from prison, welcomed the Russian October Revolution in principle while simultaneously criticised the Bolsheviks' suppression of democratic participation and their cadre-party model. This criticism of Bolshevism distinguished the Spartacists, at least initially, from the emerging Communist International.
The November Revolution and re-founding
When Germany's military situation collapsed in late 1918, revolution swept the country. Soldiers and workers formed councils spontaneously across Germany without the initiative or leadership of any of the left-wing parties. On 9 November 1918, two republics were proclaimed: Philipp Scheidemann (MSPD) declared "the German Republic" from the Reichstag balcony, while Karl Liebknecht proclaimed "the free socialist republic of Germany" from the Berlin Palace around two hours later. On 11 November, the Spartacus Group reconstituted itself as the Spartacus League (Spartakusbund), a nationwide, party-independent organisation committed to establishing a socialist republic through the workers' and soldiers' councils.
Rosa Luxemburg's platform for the League demanded the disarming of the police and ruling classes, the arming of the proletariat, the socialisation of banks, mines and major industries, and contact with like-minded parties abroad to internationalise the revolution. In her essay What Does the Spartacus League Want?, published on 14 December 1918, Luxemburg emphasised that the League had no intention to take power, unless it was with the clear will of the majority of the proletariat, a conscious departure from the Bolshevik model of minority seizure of power.
At the Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils in December 1918, only ten of the 489 delegates represented the Spartacus League. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were not even allowed to attend as guests. The majority of delegates voted to hold elections on 19 January 1919 for a constituent National Assembly, which a disappointed Luxemburg described as a "willing tool of the counterrevolution."
Founding of the KPD
The founding congress
The founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) was held in Berlin from 30 December 1918 to 1 January 1919. On 31 December, 127 delegates, comprising 94 Spartacists and 29 members of the International Communists of Germany (IKD), voted to establish the KPD. The IKD was a left communist grouping based primarily in Bremen and Hamburg, founded on 23 November 1918 and being the first declared communist party in Germany. The party was under the influence of Johann Knief and Otto Rühle, and shaped by the ideas of Karl Radek and Anton Pannekoek.Gerhard Engel: The International Communists of Germany, in: Ralf Hoffrogge / Norman LaPorte (eds.): Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 25–44. The IKD brought a council communist and anti-centralist tradition into the new party that proved an early source of tension.
A major controversy at the congress concerned parliamentary elections. The leading Spartacists, including Luxemburg, Paul Levi, Leo Jogiches, and Käte Duncker, favoured contesting the upcoming elections, but delegates rejected parliamentarianism in a vote of 62 to 23, and said it was a distraction from direct revolutionary action. The party's first Central Committee included Hermann Duncker, Käte Duncker, Hugo Eberlein, Paul Frölich, Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Ernst Meyer, Wilhelm Pieck, and August Thalheimer.
The Spartacist uprising and the murder of the founders
On 5 January 1919, Berlin armaments workers and Revolutionary Stewards launched an armed uprising in protest against the dismissal of Berlin Police President Emil Eichhorn for refusing to use his forces against the People's Navy Division during the 1918 Christmas crisis. The KPD joined the call to action. The Spartacist uprising was crushed by regular army units and newly formed Freikorps paramilitaries acting on the orders of SPD Defence Minister Gustav Noske.