23 Facts About Kostja Zetkin

Konstantin "Kostja" Zetkin was a German physician, social economist and political activist.

Kostja Zetkin was the son of Clara Zetkin, an iconic pioneer of the political left in Germany.

Ossip Kostja Zetkin died from tuberculosis at the start of 1889.

In 1891 Clara Kostja Zetkin moved with her two boys back to Germany.

Kostja Zetkin became the lover of his mother's friend in 1907, and this aspect of the relationship with Rosa Luxemburg lasted till his conscription in 1915, although they would remain lifelong friends.

However, at some stage Kostja Zetkin switched to the study of Medicine.

War was declared in July 1914 and on 5 March 1915, before he had been able to complete his medical studies, Kostja Zetkin was conscripted into the army.

Kostja Zetkin served as a medical officer on the Western Front, participating in the Battle of the Somme, at Verdun and, later, at Rheims.

Kostja Zetkin continued as a medical officer through several promotions, and was awarded the Iron Cross on 10 November 1916.

Kostja Zetkin's mother remained a prolific writer, and her letters disclose that, during the 1920s and early 1930s, Kostja Zetkin was living for a time with Nadja von Massov.

Clara Kostja Zetkin was a high-profile communist and Ossip Kostja Zetkin had been Jewish.

Kostja Zetkin moved to the Soviet Union, where Kostja's elder brother Maxim had been working as a physician since 1920.

Clara Kostja Zetkin had already lived in Moscow and been looked after there by her elder son between 1924 and 1929.

Clara Kostja Zetkin died on 20 June 1933 at Arkhangelskoye, a short distance outside Moscow.

Kostja Zetkin found himself in disagreement with government representatives, apparently because of differing opinions concerning the selective publication of some of his late mother's large collection of articles, essays, letters and other politically relevant papers.

Kostja Zetkin evidently appreciated that disagreements with the authorities were unwinnable and that he himself was in danger as long as the situation persisted.

Kostja Zetkin applied for permission to emigrate again, this time to Prague to work as a physician.

The application was granted, not without some "bureaucratic reluctance", and in 1935 Kostja Zetkin moved to Czechoslovakia where he remained till 1938.

Kostja Zetkin had already written in a letter to a friend, acknowledging that restrictive employment regulations made it harder for German-qualified physicians to find professional employment in France than in Czechoslovakia.

Kostja Zetkin was able to work as a nurse and as a masseur-physiotherapist.

Kostja Zetkin was detained in a camp for four months, almost certainly in the southern part of the country.

Security in the camps was at this stage frequently lax, but according to one source Gertrude secured release for the Kostja Zetkin using the highly unconventional device of disclosing their true identities to a camp guard whom she judged, correctly, to be politically aware, and no friend to the Nazis.

Kostja Zetkin nevertheless survived the operation and indeed lived on for more than another seventeen years, dying in 1980.