Rosa Luxemburg - The Film
by David McReynolds
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The film Rosa Luxemburg was made in 1986 in
Germany by Margarethe von Trotta - it was a
commercial release, got good reviews.
Luxemburg is a legendary figure in socialist
circles, born in 1872, murdered during the
unsuccessful Sparacist rebellion in Germany in
1919, she was a leading Marxist theoretician. She
was jailed during the first world war for her
anti-war agitation (a collection of her
extraordinary "Letters From Prison" is available
for $2 from the A. J. Muste Memorial Institute -
for info check the Muste website, ajmuste.org).
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Each of us brings to any film our personal
history, gender, language, age, politics. No two
people ever see a film in the same way. These
brief notes are a tribute to "Red Rosa" as well
as a look at lessons "for our time" gained from
the film. (Those seeking an expert on Rosa
Luxemburg should write to Prof. William Pelz, who
had set up an international conference on
Luxemburg and can answer questions of history
much better than I - write him at: iwch@juno.com).
Great names from Marxist history take life on the
screen, not only Rosa, but Karl Liebknecht, Karl
Kautsky, Clara Zetkin, August Bebel - key figures
in the German Social Democratic movement at that
time. That movement is shown as it was - a major
force in European politics, headed by men and
women who had hoped to secure social revolution
through the electoral process. They are filmed at
a grand party in 1900 as the new century came in,
and with it, great hopes for fundamental change.
The horror of the Great War lay fourteen years in
the future, the Russian Revolution seventeen years.
The film jumps back and forth, from Rosa's time
in prison, to her youth; from the debates about
how to move Germany forward to the news from
Russia. But to younger radicals what should stand
out was the pervasive anti-militarism both of
Rosa Luxemburg, and of the political movement of
which she was a part. The hatred of war as an
institution dominated the film, every bit as much
as the struggle against European capitalism. For
a left which has since tended to relegate
militarism to a secondary issue, it is important
to see the film to realize the extent to which
radicals at that time - those, like Luxemburg,
who were truly revolutionaries - saw the
institution of war as a basic enemy.
For the European left the thought of a woman
playing such a key role in her debates with
fellow Social-Democrats was remarkable.
Margarethe von Trotta deserves credit for not
over-emphasizing this - for giving us Rosa
Luxemburg primarily as a radical leader.
Luxemburg, in otherwords, is not used to advance
an agenda, but as a key historic figure in her
own right.
The tragedy of that period was the "Great War".
Rosa was among those who argued to the very
moment the war began (and after it started!) that
socialists must oppose it, call for strikes, mass
action, even revolution - for anything that would
save the workers of Europe from tearing each
other apart. Nearly a century has passed, and
that moment still reaches out, the absolute
failure of European Social Democracy to stop the
war which would, all too soon, lead to Hitler. It
is easy to blame the social democrats for their
failure. I wish it were that simple. The fact is
that nationalism was as much the root cause as
capitalism. The German left was no more prepared
then to risk being seen as disloyal to Germany
than liberals are today in the face of the US
Occupation of Iraq. I listened to Ralph Nader
tonight, who was interviewed on the Tim Russert
Show, and the best he could do in the face of the
US invasion of Iraq was to call for a
"responsible" plan for withdrawal in six months,
after internationally supervised elections. It
was then, and is now, a kind of treason to state
that our loyalty is to values higher than our own
state, to condemn utterly and without reservation
the militaray adventures of our ruling class.
I remember in talking with both A. J. Muste and
Norman Thomas that, whatever their disagreements
(Muste was more radical than Thomas), both men
looked back to the failure of the Second
International as a decisive, tragic turning
point, the results of which would haunt the 20th
Century.
Finally, I thought of the problem we face, in the
here and now. We do not have a coherent movement.
We do not have, as the French and German
socialists did then, representation in
parliaments. We do not have an organized
opposition party. Some of you getting this know
as well as I do all the byways of the last fifty
years, all the ego trips (as well as honest
efforts) would-be revolutionists have pursued,
trying to substitute tiny groups, cults,
"mini-mass parties", for any real base. We have
seen Trotskyist and Maoist and Stalinist efforts
to build revolutionary vanguards, in the process
chewing up lives and time and leaving very little
behind. How painful it is then to look back at
Rosa Luxemburg, a genuine leader with a mass
following, part of a movement with trade union
support, and realize that she failed, that all of
social-democracy failed the test. (Yes, there
were sections of the International, including the
US Socialist Party, Lenin's wing of Russian
Social Democracy, the Italians, etc., which
opposed the war even after it began - and that
should be remembered. But more important, to
remember that just as Lenin's Revolution ended in
an historic blind alley, so too did the largely
peaceful, electorally oriented socialist forces
in Western Europe).
We have so very far to go before we will even
reach the point at which Rosa Luxemburg saw her
hopes consumed in the fire of that war. I have no
idea how to build that "mass movement", much less
how to guarantee that "this time it won't fail".
But I do know we don't have that movement! I
hope a film such as Rosa Luxemburg can give us a
trace more humility than we sometimes have, as
well as helping to rescue a courageous woman from
the relative dust bin of history.
To take a line from one of Kenneth Patchen's
poems, we have no choice but "to pause and begin
again". The forces Rosa Luxemburg confronted are
still in charge. And we are still in the
resistance - where else can we be? Politics
becomes in some ways an existential matter. We
not only do not know if we can win, but history
suggests the odds are against us. If we still
choose to gamble on the struggle, it is because
the struggle defines us. As Gandhi would note,
the ends are never in our hands, only the means.
And for us, the struggle is a necessary path, the
"means" at least to defining who we are as this
new century begins.
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– David McReynolds
Rosa Luxemburg (1986) by Margarethe von Trotta
Barbara Sukowa
Daniel Olbrychski
Otto Sander
Adelheid Arndt
Jürgen Holtz
Doris Schade
Hannes Jaenicke
Jan Biczycki
Karin Baal
Winfried Glatzeder
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Rosa Luxemburg
Leo Jogiches
Karl Liebknecht
Luise Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Clara Zetkin
Kostja Zetkin
August Bebel
Mathilde Jacob
Paul Levi
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Margarethe von Trotta based her cinematic study
of Rosa Luxemburg on the Poland-born,
German-based activist's letters and speeches. It
is essentially a political study, though von
Trotta manages to show Luxemburg 'the
revolutionary' as well as reveal Luxemburg 'the
person'. Barbara Sukowa shared the Best Actress
award at Cannes in 1986 for her passionate
portrayal of Luxemburg.
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