"While she was speaking I realized why she was considered one of the greatest speakers and teachers of the movement. Her simplicity, her enthusiasm, and deep sincerity, together with her wit, combined to produce a profound effect upon her audience. She was extraordinarily endowed intellectually. While still a very young girl, a university student, she had impressed authorities on political economy with her precocious writings on this subject. She had an exceptionally keen critical mind, and at an age when most girls are interested in little except clothes, romantic novels, and dancing, she was already a regular and highly-respected contributor to the scientific Marxian journals. Rosa Luxemburg belonged to that generation of famous women who had to struggle against almost insurmountable obstacles to gain opportunities which the men of her day accepted as a matter of course. For a woman to acquire intellectual recognition at that time demanded an authentic thirst for knowledge, much tenacity and an iron will. Rosa Luxemburg had all of these qualities to an exceptional degree. But there was also a softer side to her nature. When, after her tragic death, some of her letters to her intimate friends were published, they were a revelation to the public-particularly perhaps to that section of it which read the conservative press, which usually referred to her as "the Red Fury." Those letters were poetic in the truest sense of the word. The intense political activity and scientific work of Rosa Luxemburg expressed but one aspect of her mind and personality."
Rosa Luxemburg

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English