21 Facts About Wilhelm Liebknecht

Wilhelm Liebknecht was one of the principal founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Wilhelm Liebknecht was the father of socialists Karl Liebknecht and Theodor Liebknecht.

In 1875, Wilhelm Liebknecht helped to unite the SDAP and ADAV to form the party which later became the SPD, and was largely responsible for drafting its inaugural Gotha Program.

Wilhelm Liebknecht was a member of the Reichstag from 1874, and an important member of the Second International from 1889.

Wilhelm Liebknecht was born in 1826 in Giessen, the son of Katharina Elisabeth Henrietta and Hessian public official Ludwig Christian Liebknecht.

Wilhelm Liebknecht grew up with relatives after the death of his parents in 1832.

Wilhelm Liebknecht studied the writings of Saint-Simon, from which he gained his first interest in communism, and had been converted to the extreme republican theories of which Giessen was a centre.

Wilhelm Liebknecht reported these events for a German newspaper, the Mannheimer Abendzeitung, beginning a career in journalism that he would pursue for the next five decades.

When revolution erupted in Paris in February 1848, Wilhelm Liebknecht hurried to the scene.

Wilhelm Liebknecht arrived too late to do much in Paris, but he did join a legion that was traveling to Germany to instigate revolution there.

Wilhelm Liebknecht then became a member of the Badische Volkswehr and an adjutant of Gustav von Struve and fought in the ill-fated Reichverfassungskampfe.

In 1850, Wilhelm Liebknecht was arrested for his initiatives to unite Switzerland's German workers' associations and was banished from the country.

From 1864 to 1865, Wilhelm Liebknecht worked for the magazine Der Social-Demokrat published by Jean Baptista von Schweitzer.

Wilhelm Liebknecht quit the editorial staff and was forced to leave the ADAV due to pressure from Schweitzer.

Wilhelm Liebknecht was the editor of the party newspaper, Der Volksstaat.

Wilhelm Liebknecht opposed the war regardless of which side started it.

Wilhelm Liebknecht's call for revolutionary opposition to the war directly contradicts what his party would do in 1914 when World War I began as at that time, with Liebknecht long dead, his successors opted to back the German cause in the war.

Wilhelm Liebknecht became publisher of the newly founded party organ Vorwarts, arguing for the integration of Marxist theories into the SAPD's program in his articles.

Wilhelm Liebknecht used his position as a Reichstag member to criticize the political situation and opposed the tendencies in his own party toward anarchism on the one hand and accommodation with Bismarck on the other.

In 1891, Wilhelm Liebknecht became editor-in-chief of Vorwarts and one of the originators of the SPD's new Marxist-inspired party platform.

Wilhelm Liebknecht died aged 74 on 7 August 1900 in Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin.