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WHO WAS CLARA ZETKIN ?
WHO WAS CLARA ZETKIN ?
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Clara Zetkin (née Eißner; 5 July 1857
- 20 June 1933) was an influential
socialist German politician and a
fighter for women's rights. Until
1917, she was active in the Social
Democratic Party of Germany, then
she joined the Independent Social
Democratic Party of Germany
(USPD) and its far-left wing, the
Spartacist League; this later became
the Communist Party of Germany
(KPD), which she represented in the
Reichstag during the Weimar
Republic from 1920 to 1933.
Contents
1 Life and work
2 Posthumous honors
3 See also
4 Further reading
Life and work
Zetkin was born Clara Eissner in
Wiederau, a peasant village in
Saxony.[1] Her father, Gottfried
Eissner, was a schoolmaster and
church organist who was a devout
Protestant, while her mother,
Josephine Vitale Eissner, came from
a bourgeoisie family from Leipzig
and was highly educated.[1][2][3]
Having studied to become a teacher,
Zetkin developed connections with
the women's movement and the
labour movement in Germany from
1874. In 1878 she joined the Socialist
Workers' Party (Sozialistische
Arbeiterpartei, SAP). This party had
been founded in 1875 by merging
two previous parties: the ADAV
formed by Ferdinand Lassalle and
the SDAP of August Bebel and
Wilhelm Liebknecht. In 1890 its
name was changed to its modern
version Social Democratic Party of
Germany (SPD).
Because of the ban placed on
socialist activity in Germany by
Bismarck in 1878, Zetkin left for
Zurich in 1882 then went into exile
in Paris. During her time in Paris she
played an important role in the
foundation of the Socialist
International socialist group. She
also adopted the name of her lover,
the Russian revolutionary Ossip
Zetkin, with whom she had two
sons, Kostja and Maxim. Ossip Zetkin
died in 1889. Later, Zetkin was
married to the artist Georg Friedrich
Zundel, eighteen years her junior,
from 1899 to 1928.
In the SPD, Zetkin, along with Rosa
Luxemburg, her close friend and
confidante, was one of the main
figures of the far-left revolutionary
wing of the party. In the debate on
Revisionism at the turn of the
twentieth century she, along with
Luxemburg, attacked the reformist
theses of Eduard Bernstein.
Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, 1910
Zetkin was very interested in
women's politics, including the fight
for equal opportunities and women's
suffrage. She developed the socialdemocratic women's movement in
Germany; from 1891 to 1917 she
edited the SPD women's newspaper
Die Gleichheit (Equality). In 1907 she
became the leader of the newly
founded "Women's Office" at the
SPD. She started up the first
"International Women's Day" on 8
March 1911, launching the idea of it
in Copenhagen, in what later
became the Ungdomshuset.
During the First World War Zetkin,
along with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa
Luxemburg and other influential SPD
politicians, rejected the party's
policy of Burgfrieden (a truce with
the government, promising to
refrain from any strikes during the
war). Among other anti-war
activities, Zetkin organised an