Bertha Thalheimer (17 March 1883 – 23 April 1959) was a German left-wing peace activist who became a politician ( KPD ).
138-675: The Spartacus League ( German : Spartakusbund ) was a Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I . It was founded in August 1914 as the International Group by Rosa Luxemburg , Karl Liebknecht , Clara Zetkin , and other members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) who were dissatisfied with the party's official policies in support of the war. In 1916 it renamed itself
276-465: A de facto official language of Namibia after the end of German colonial rule alongside English and Afrikaans , and had de jure co-official status from 1984 until its independence from South Africa in 1990. However, the Namibian government perceived Afrikaans and German as symbols of apartheid and colonialism, and decided English would be the sole official language upon independence, stating that it
414-402: A second language , and 75–100 million as a foreign language . This would imply the existence of approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide. German sociolinguist Ulrich Ammon estimated a number of 289 million German foreign language speakers without clarifying the criteria by which he classified a speaker. As of 2012 , about 90 million people, or 16% of
552-612: A "commonly used" language and the Pan South African Language Board is obligated to promote and ensure respect for it. Cameroon was also a colony of the German Empire from the same period (1884 to 1916). However, German was replaced by French and English, the languages of the two successor colonial powers, after its loss in World War I . Nevertheless, since the 21st century, German has become
690-533: A couple of years during the early 1920s, took a leading position in the party, Bertha Thalheimer was a co-founder in 1925, of the Red Women's and Girls' League ( "Der „Rote Frauen und Mädchenbund“" / RFMB) . However, as the decade progressed the party leadership was taken over by hardline Stalinists. The increasingly bitter rivalry in the Moscow party between Stalin and those, notably Leon Trotsky , who doubted
828-562: A decisive battle with the British fleet. They appointed or elected workers' and soldiers' councils without the initiative or leadership of any of the left-wing parties. An essential prerequisite for this revolutionary coming together of workers and soldiers was the January 1918 strike in the German armaments industry. Revolutionary stewards who were independent of parties but often close to
966-559: A greater need for regularity in written conventions. While the major changes of the MHG period were socio-cultural, High German was still undergoing significant linguistic changes in syntax, phonetics, and morphology as well (e.g. diphthongization of certain vowel sounds: hus (OHG & MHG "house") → haus (regionally in later MHG)→ Haus (NHG), and weakening of unstressed short vowels to schwa [ə]: taga (OHG "days")→ tage (MHG)). A great wealth of texts survives from
1104-767: A national revolution. Because the Stewards wanted to postpone such actions until 11 November, their schedule was overtaken by the Kiel sailors' uprising and the November Revolution it triggered. On 9 November 1918, a republic was proclaimed twice : Philipp Scheidemann (MSPD) proclaimed "the German Republic" from the balcony of the Reichstag building in the morning. Liebknecht then proclaimed "the free socialist republic of Germany" about two hours later in
1242-458: A native tongue today, mostly descendants of German colonial settlers . The period of German colonialism in Namibia also led to the evolution of a Standard German-based pidgin language called " Namibian Black German ", which became a second language for parts of the indigenous population. Although it is nearly extinct today, some older Namibians still have some knowledge of it. German remained
1380-696: A popular foreign language among pupils and students, with 300,000 people learning or speaking German in Cameroon in 2010 and over 230,000 in 2020. Today Cameroon is one of the African countries outside Namibia with the highest number of people learning German. In the United States, German is the fifth most spoken language in terms of native and second language speakers after English, Spanish , French , and Chinese (with figures for Cantonese and Mandarin combined), with over 1 million total speakers. In
1518-483: A result, the surviving texts are written in highly disparate regional dialects and exhibit significant Latin influence, particularly in vocabulary. At this point monasteries, where most written works were produced, were dominated by Latin, and German saw only occasional use in official and ecclesiastical writing. While there is no complete agreement over the dates of the Middle High German (MHG) period, it
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#17327727147971656-725: A socialist republic. To this end, the workers' and soldiers' councils were to assume all power, the Reichstag and all state parliaments eliminated, along with the provisional Reich government under the majority Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert . On 11 November 1918, on Liebknecht's initiative, the Spartacus Group was re-founded at the Excelsior Hotel in Berlin. It became an autonomous, party-independent, national organization. The new name Spartacus League ( Spartakusbund )
1794-717: Is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family , mainly spoken in Western and Central Europe . It is the most spoken native language within the European Union . It is the most widely spoken and official (or co-official) language in Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol . It is also an official language of Luxembourg , Belgium and
1932-601: Is a recognized minority language in the following countries: In France, the High German varieties of Alsatian and Moselle Franconian are identified as " regional languages ", but the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages of 1998 has not yet been ratified by the government. Namibia also was a colony of the German Empire, from 1884 to 1915. About 30,000 people still speak German as
2070-612: Is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects , with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. Some of these non-standard varieties have become recognized and protected by regional or national governments. Since 2004, heads of state of the German-speaking countries have met every year, and the Council for German Orthography has been the main international body regulating German orthography . German
2208-558: Is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages . The Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic , East Germanic , and West Germanic . The first of these branches survives in modern Danish , Swedish , Norwegian , Faroese , and Icelandic , all of which are descended from Old Norse . The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic
2346-478: Is called the "German Sprachraum ". German is the official language of the following countries: German is a co-official language of the following countries: Although expulsions and (forced) assimilation after the two World wars greatly diminished them, minority communities of mostly bilingual German native speakers exist in areas both adjacent to and detached from the Sprachraum. Within Europe, German
2484-430: Is complicated by the existence of several varieties whose status as separate "languages" or "dialects" is disputed for political and linguistic reasons, including quantitatively strong varieties like certain forms of Alemannic and Low German . With the inclusion or exclusion of certain varieties, it is estimated that approximately 90–95 million people speak German as a first language , 10–25 million speak it as
2622-582: Is driven by class struggles . At the 1907 congresses of the Second International in London and Stuttgart , it was decided that the European workers' parties would oppose the threat of war between the major European powers. At the 1912 Basel conference, additional antiwar measures were decided on, including that the working classes should "exert every effort to prevent the outbreak of war by
2760-535: Is generally seen as ending when the 1346–53 Black Death decimated Europe's population. Modern High German begins with the Early New High German (ENHG) period, which Wilhelm Scherer dates 1350–1650, terminating with the end of the Thirty Years' War . This period saw the further displacement of Latin by German as the primary language of courtly proceedings and, increasingly, of literature in
2898-611: Is generally seen as lasting from 1050 to 1350. This was a period of significant expansion of the geographical territory occupied by Germanic tribes, and consequently of the number of German speakers. Whereas during the Old High German period the Germanic tribes extended only as far east as the Elbe and Saale rivers, the MHG period saw a number of these tribes expanding beyond this eastern boundary into Slavic territory (known as
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#17327727147973036-565: Is less closely related to languages based on Low Franconian dialects (e.g., Dutch and Afrikaans), Low German or Low Saxon dialects (spoken in northern Germany and southern Denmark ), neither of which underwent the High German consonant shift. As has been noted, the former of these dialect types is Istvaeonic and the latter Ingvaeonic, whereas the High German dialects are all Irminonic; the differences between these languages and standard German are therefore considerable. Also related to German are
3174-435: Is one of the major languages of the world . German is the second-most widely spoken Germanic language , after English, both as a first and as a second language . German is also widely taught as a foreign language , especially in continental Europe (where it is the third most taught foreign language after English and French), and in the United States. Overall, German is the fourth most commonly learned second language, and
3312-597: Is one of the three biggest newspapers in Namibia and the only German-language daily in Africa. An estimated 12,000 people speak German or a German variety as a first language in South Africa, mostly originating from different waves of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the largest communities consists of the speakers of "Nataler Deutsch", a variety of Low German concentrated in and around Wartburg . The South African constitution identifies German as
3450-401: Is partly derived from Latin and Greek , along with fewer words borrowed from French and Modern English . English, however, is the main source of more recent loanwords . German is a pluricentric language ; the three standardized variants are German , Austrian , and Swiss Standard German . Standard German is sometimes called High German , which refers to its regional origin. German
3588-525: Is the Sachsenspiegel , the first book of laws written in Middle Low German ( c. 1220 ). The abundance and especially the secular character of the literature of the MHG period demonstrate the beginnings of a standardized written form of German, as well as the desire of poets and authors to be understood by individuals on supra-dialectal terms. The Middle High German period
3726-578: Is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch , Yiddish , Afrikaans , and others. Within the West Germanic language dialect continuum, the Benrath and Uerdingen lines (running through Düsseldorf - Benrath and Krefeld - Uerdingen , respectively) serve to distinguish
3864-485: Is understood in all areas where German is spoken. Approximate distribution of native German speakers (assuming a rounded total of 95 million) worldwide: As a result of the German diaspora , as well as the popularity of German taught as a foreign language , the geographical distribution of German speakers (or "Germanophones") spans all inhabited continents. However, an exact, global number of native German speakers
4002-403: Is what the bulletins from the guardians of “order” proclaim from one center of the world-historic struggle to the next. And the jubilant “victors” fail to notice that any “order” that needs to be regularly maintained through bloody slaughter heads inexorably toward its historic destiny; its own demise. [...] “Order prevails in Berlin!” You foolish lackeys! Your “order” is built on sand. Tomorrow
4140-689: The Ostsiedlung ). With the increasing wealth and geographic spread of the Germanic groups came greater use of German in the courts of nobles as the standard language of official proceedings and literature. A clear example of this is the mittelhochdeutsche Dichtersprache employed in the Hohenstaufen court in Swabia as a standardized supra-dialectal written language. While these efforts were still regionally bound, German began to be used in place of Latin for certain official purposes, leading to
4278-639: The Alamanni , Bavarian, and Thuringian groups, all belonging to the Elbe Germanic group ( Irminones ), which had settled in what is now southern-central Germany and Austria between the second and sixth centuries, during the great migration. In general, the surviving texts of Old High German (OHG) show a wide range of dialectal diversity with very little written uniformity. The early written tradition of OHG survived mostly through monasteries and scriptoria as local translations of Latin originals; as
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4416-513: The Boys' Gymnasium (secondary school) , for which special permission was obtained, presumably because there was no place available at an appropriately academic girls' school. Her brother, meanwhile, concluded his schooling at an elite Jesuit school, although the Thalheimers were a Jewish family. On leaving school she moved to Berlin to study Applied Economics ( "Nationalökonomie" ) . In 1910,
4554-658: The Communist Party (Opposition) ( "Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Opposition)" / KPDO / KPO) of which her brother had been a co-founder. Bertha Thalheimer worked for the KPO as a speaker and as a journalist, writing contributions for the party's bimonthly newspaper "Arbeiterpolitik" and for the Stuttgart-based "Arbeiter-Tribüne". The political backdrop changed, as it seemed, permanently in January 1933 when
4692-633: The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) when it was formed on 1 January 1919 and at that point ceased to exist as a separate entity. The League's name referred to Spartacus , the leader of a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic (73–71 BCE). For the Spartacists, his name symbolized the ongoing resistance of the oppressed against their exploiters and thus expressed the Marxist view of historical materialism , according to which history
4830-537: The Early Middle Ages . German is an inflected language , with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and two numbers (singular, plural). It has strong and weak verbs . The majority of its vocabulary derives from the ancient Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, while a smaller share
4968-417: The European Union 's population, spoke German as their mother tongue, making it the second most widely spoken language on the continent after Russian and the second biggest language in terms of overall speakers (after English), as well as the most spoken native language. The area in central Europe where the majority of the population speaks German as a first language and has German as a (co-)official language
5106-618: The German SPD to reject further war funding. During these years Bertha Thalheimer and her sister-in-law Cläre Thalheimer were also working closely with Leo Jogiches . Although the anti-war message gained popular traction, the political authorities in the leading belligerent powers - except in the Russian empire - were untouched by it: in March 1917 Thalheimer, who had been participating in anti-war street protests in defiance of court orders,
5244-522: The German states . While these states were still part of the Holy Roman Empire , and far from any form of unification, the desire for a cohesive written language that would be understandable across the many German-speaking principalities and kingdoms was stronger than ever. As a spoken language German remained highly fractured throughout this period, with a vast number of often mutually incomprehensible regional dialects being spoken throughout
5382-746: The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I , and the other being Meißner Deutsch , used in the Electorate of Saxony in the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg . Alongside these courtly written standards, the invention of the printing press led to the development of a number of printers' languages ( Druckersprachen ) aimed at making printed material readable and understandable across as many diverse dialects of German as possible. The greater ease of production and increased availability of written texts brought about increased standardisation in
5520-533: The Lustgarten , then later from the Berlin Palace . There was no joy over what had been achieved that day in the Spartacus Group. The following night the leaders agreed that only a "first, quick victory" had been won. The goals set were to completely eliminate feudalism and the aristocratic Prussian Junker class, to overcome national "fragmentation into fatherlands and little fatherlands", and to create
5658-491: The Nazi Party took power in Germany and lost little time in transforming the country into a one- party dictatorship . The Nazis had built their support base on the traditional populist twin pillars of hope and hate. The principal targets of their hate were Communists and Jews . From a Nazi perspective Bertha Thalheimer qualified as both Communist and Jewish. This was the context in which Karl Wilhelm Schöttle, who
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5796-666: The Old High German language in several Elder Futhark inscriptions from as early as the sixth century AD (such as the Pforzen buckle ), the Old High German period is generally seen as beginning with the Abrogans (written c. 765–775 ), a Latin-German glossary supplying over 3,000 Old High German words with their Latin equivalents. After the Abrogans , the first coherent works written in Old High German appear in
5934-623: The People's Navy Division ( Volksmarinedivision ), which had been assigned to protect the interim government. The resulting confrontation at the Berlin Palace between it and units of the Reich military caused 67 deaths. The three USPD representatives on the Council of the People's Deputies blamed Ebert and, unaware of his secret agreement with Groener, saw his actions as an attempt to block
6072-811: The Spartacist uprising . It failed when the Reich army that had assembled around Berlin, along with newly formed Freikorps units, put down the uprising on the orders of Gustav Noske (MSPD), the member of the Council of the People's Deputies who was responsible for military affairs. The restoration of peace and order was declared. Immediately after this, on 14 January, Rosa Luxemburg wrote in Die Rote Fahne : “Order prevails in Warsaw!” “Order prevails in Paris!” “Order prevails in Berlin!” Every half-century that
6210-744: The Spartacus Group and in 1917 joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), which had split off from the SPD as its left wing faction. During the November Revolution of 1918 that broke out across Germany at the end of the war, the Spartacus Group re-established itself as a nationwide, non-party organization called the "Spartacus League" with the goal of instituting a soviet republic that would include all of Germany. It became part of
6348-427: The Sprachraum in Europe. German is used in a wide variety of spheres throughout the country, especially in business, tourism, and public signage, as well as in education, churches (most notably the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (GELK) ), other cultural spheres such as music, and media (such as German language radio programs by the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation ). The Allgemeine Zeitung
6486-422: The Standard German language in its written form, and the Duden Handbook was declared its standard definition. Punctuation and compound spelling (joined or isolated compounds) were not standardized in the process. The Deutsche Bühnensprache ( lit. ' German stage language ' ) by Theodor Siebs had established conventions for German pronunciation in theatres , three years earlier; however, this
6624-400: The Upper German dialects spoken in the southern German-speaking countries , such as Swiss German ( Alemannic dialects ) and the various Germanic dialects spoken in the French region of Grand Est , such as Alsatian (mainly Alemannic, but also Central–and Upper Franconian dialects) and Lorraine Franconian (Central Franconian). After these High German dialects, standard German
6762-408: The pagan Germanic tradition. Of particular interest to scholars, however, has been the Hildebrandslied , a secular epic poem telling the tale of an estranged father and son unknowingly meeting each other in battle. Linguistically, this text is highly interesting due to the mixed use of Old Saxon and Old High German dialects in its composition. The written works of this period stem mainly from
6900-406: The 1848 Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and pledged itself to the dictatorship of the proletariat , i.e. workers' control of the means of production and operation. Unlike the Bolsheviks, however, the Spartacus Group was not constituted as an elite cadre party. The November Revolution started as a result the Kiel mutiny , when ships' crews resisted an order to prepare for
7038-614: The Empire. Its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Prague (German: Prag ) and Budapest ( Buda , German: Ofen ), to name two examples, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain; others, like Pressburg ( Pozsony , now Bratislava), were originally settled during the Habsburg period and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and cities like Zagreb (German: Agram ) or Ljubljana (German: Laibach ), contained significant German minorities. In
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#17327727147977176-414: The Frisian languages— North Frisian (spoken in Nordfriesland ), Saterland Frisian (spoken in Saterland ), and West Frisian (spoken in Friesland )—as well as the Anglic languages of English and Scots. These Anglo-Frisian dialects did not take part in the High German consonant shift, and the Anglic languages also adopted much vocabulary from both Old Norse and the Norman language . The history of
7314-417: The German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the Migration Period , which separated Old High German dialects from Old Saxon . This sound shift involved a drastic change in the pronunciation of both voiced and voiceless stop consonants ( b , d , g , and p , t , k , respectively). The primary effects of the shift were the following below. While there is written evidence of
7452-399: The German states; the invention of the printing press c. 1440 and the publication of Luther's vernacular translation of the Bible in 1534, however, had an immense effect on standardizing German as a supra-dialectal written language. The ENHG period saw the rise of several important cross-regional forms of chancery German, one being gemeine tiutsch , used in the court of
7590-623: The Germanic dialects that were affected by the High German consonant shift (south of Benrath) from those that were not (north of Uerdingen). The various regional dialects spoken south of these lines are grouped as High German dialects, while those spoken to the north comprise the Low German and Low Franconian dialects. As members of the West Germanic language family, High German, Low German, and Low Franconian have been proposed to be further distinguished historically as Irminonic , Ingvaeonic , and Istvaeonic , respectively. This classification indicates their historical descent from dialects spoken by
7728-547: The Irminones (also known as the Elbe group), Ingvaeones (or North Sea Germanic group), and Istvaeones (or Weser–Rhine group). Standard German is based on a combination of Thuringian - Upper Saxon and Upper Franconian dialects, which are Central German and Upper German dialects belonging to the High German dialect group. German is therefore closely related to the other languages based on High German dialects, such as Luxembourgish (based on Central Franconian dialects ) and Yiddish . Also closely related to Standard German are
7866-644: The Italian autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia , as well as a recognized national language in Namibia . There are also notable German-speaking communities in France ( Alsace ), the Czech Republic ( North Bohemia ), Poland ( Upper Silesia ), Slovakia ( Košice Region , Spiš , and Hauerland ), Denmark ( North Schleswig ), Romania and Hungary ( Sopron ). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in Brazil ( Blumenau and Pomerode ), South Africa ( Kroondal ), Namibia , among others, some communities have decidedly Austrian German or Swiss German characters (e.g. Pozuzo , Peru). German
8004-438: The January strike the previous year, instigated an armed uprising in protest against the dismissal of Berlin Police President Emil Eichhorn for refusing to use his forces against the People's Navy Division during the confrontation at the Berlin Palace. The KPD joined the call to action. It attempted to involve the soldiers' councils of the Berlin regiments in the overthrow of Friedrich Ebert's government in what came to be known as
8142-408: The MHG period. Significantly, these texts include a number of impressive secular works, such as the Nibelungenlied , an epic poem telling the story of the dragon -slayer Siegfried ( c. thirteenth century ), and the Iwein , an Arthurian verse poem by Hartmann von Aue ( c. 1203 ), lyric poems , and courtly romances such as Parzival and Tristan . Also noteworthy
8280-441: The MSPD primarily responsible for the failure of the November Revolution and the Weimar Republic. The Spartacus League and the KPD had committed "tactical", not strategic, mistakes. In West Germany the strongest influence of the Spartacus League was on the student movement of the 1960s. After its expulsion from the SPD in 1961, the majority of the Socialist German Student League (SDS) held a Marxist-Leninist view of history in which
8418-417: The Revolutionary Stewards for their admission failed in part because Liebknecht did not want to drop the supplementary "Spartacus League" from the party name. Rosa Luxemburg had argued for "Socialist Party" in order to preserve the independence of German communists from the Bolsheviks and to facilitate their cooperation with other socialists. In addition to the party name, its relationship to parliamentarianism
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#17327727147978556-505: The SPD's local groups, those in Berlin- Charlottenburg and Berlin- Mariendorf were initially the only ones to declare their support for the appeal. On 30 October 1914, the International Group publicly distanced itself from the SPD leadership, which had previously criticized the Second International in the Swiss newspaper Berner Tagwacht . From that point on the group's members were under police surveillance, and soon after some were arrested and imprisoned. On 2 December 1914 Karl Liebknecht
8694-402: The SPD's unwritten rule to maintain party solidarity and unity. With its approval of the imperial government's war policy, the SPD parliamentary group abandoned three program points that they had adhered to since the party's founding: proletarian internationalism, class struggle and opposition to militarism. The International Group came about through Rosa Luxemburg's initiative. Immediately after
8832-437: The SPD's view, with the result that it became the prevalent one in the Weimar Republic . The historiography of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) found the Spartacus League and its politics controversial. In 1938 Stalin classified the November Revolution as a "bourgeois" rather than a socialist revolution, devalued the councils of the time as "compliant tools of the bourgeois parliament" and held them responsible for
8970-515: The SPD. But it retained its group status as a "closed propaganda association" in order to influence the USPD. In the USPD, too, the internationalist Marxists were a minority. Revisionists like Eduard Bernstein and centrists like Hugo Haase and the SPD's former platform writer Karl Kautsky were in agreement with the Spartacists only when it came to rejecting war loans. At the Zimmerwald Conference , an international antiwar convention held in September 1915, they had refused to defend their rejection in
9108-414: The Soviet Union, East Germany and the East German Communist Party sought to realize the goals of the Spartacus League. They saw and attempted to use pending educational and social reforms and opposition to the Vietnam War as a learning ground for building a new radical democratic international. The West German extra-parliamentary opposition took its cue from historical attempts at council democracy and, like
9246-414: The Spartacists and other Marxists, regarded it as a form of direct democracy superior to parliamentarianism. After its peak years in the sixties, the West German student movement continued to make use of the Spartacus name although it often had little relationship to the original Spartacus League. German language German (German: Deutsch , pronounced [dɔʏtʃ] )
9384-418: The Spartacus League Want? " It stated: The Spartacus League will never take over governmental power except in response to the clear, unambiguous will of the great majority of the proletarian mass of all of Germany, never except by the proletariat’s conscious affirmation of the views, aims, and methods of struggle of the Spartacus League. ... The victory of the Spartacus League comes not at the beginning, but at
9522-415: The Spartacus League as an offshoot of the Bolsheviks and the originator of uprisings and attempted coups. They invoked the danger of Bolshevism as something that had to be fought, even militarily, in order to save democracy. Although the Spartacus League had neither created, organized nor led the soviet movement and had no real options for attaining power, conservative and radical right-wing parties also shared
9660-491: The Spartacus League. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were not even allowed to attend as guests. The majority of delegates voted to hold elections on 19 January 1919 for a constituent National Assembly . A disappointed Rosa Luxemburg described the congress as a "willing tool of the counterrevolution". The congress's results accelerated the Spartacists' drive to break away from the USPD and form their own party. On 24 December 1918 Friedrich Ebert attempted to disband and dismiss
9798-443: The Thalheimer siblings joined the Social Democratic Party . They gravitated easily to the left of the party working on political matters with friends such as Rosa Luxemburg , Clara Zetkin , Fritz Westmeyer and the Mehrings . Bertha saw her most important task as the political education of young people. August and Bertha Thalheimer both wrote for "Gleichheit" ( "Equality" ) , the feminist magazine edited by Clara Zetkin , and for
9936-455: The USPD had emerged and now carried the revolution into big cities throughout the Reich. The newly formed workers' councils took up some of the demands of the Spartacus Group without it having called on them to do so or being able to exert any organizational influence on them, since until then such activity had been banned. The German workers' and soldiers' councils arose spontaneously in sections of
10074-523: The armed forces' loyalty to the new government. The 6 December fighting took place because Groener, in order to prevent power from being taken away from the Reich military, wanted to prevent the meeting of the Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils planned for 16 December in Berlin. On 14 December Rosa Luxemburg published an article of policy in The Red Flag entitled " What Does
10212-459: The better known were Willi Budich, Edwin Hoernle , Paul Lange, Jacob Walcher and Friedrich Westmeyer . In April 1917 the opponents of the war within the SPD founded their own party, the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD); the rest of the SPD then took the name Majority Social Democratic Party (MSPD). The Spartacus Group joined the USPD even though it had previously opposed splitting
10350-576: The bourgeoisie" after an attempted assassination of Lenin "an idiocy of the first order". In her essay The Russian Revolution from the fall of 1918, Luxemburg welcomed in principle the October Revolution of 1917, in which the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Leon Trotsky dissolved the Duma and seized state power, but she criticized the Bolsheviks' party organization, Lenin's cadre concept, and
10488-493: The central statement of the Spartacus program that the party would take over the government only through the clear will of a majority of the population. Radek said that a proletarian revolution always begins with a minority seizing political power. On 31 December 1918, 127 delegates, including 94 Spartacists and 29 IKD representatives, decided to unite to form the "Communist Party of Germany (Spartacus League)". Negotiations with
10626-543: The council-communist Communist Workers Party of Germany and the General Workers Union, since they were united in their rejection of Stalinism, united in 1926 to form the "Spartacus League of Left Communist Organizations", also called "Spartacus League No. 2". Its attempt to unite radical left-wing groups as an alternative to the KPD achieved only further fragmentation. In 1919 the SPD and its press organs portrayed
10764-505: The country. Revolutionaries broke into prisons, releasing the inmates. Elsewhere the panicking authorities released prisoners in order to averts such attacks. Bertha Thalheimer was one of thousands of prisoners who found themselves abruptly released. By the end of 1918 she was participating in what became the founding conference of the Communist Party which took place in Berlin between 30 December 1918 and 1 January 1919. The party leaders were
10902-482: The development of non-local forms of language and exposed all speakers to forms of German from outside their own area. With Luther's rendering of the Bible in the vernacular, German asserted itself against the dominance of Latin as a legitimate language for courtly, literary, and now ecclesiastical subject-matter. His Bible was ubiquitous in the German states: nearly every household possessed a copy. Nevertheless, even with
11040-456: The dialect so as to make the work as natural and accessible to German speakers as possible. Copies of Luther's Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region, translating words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Luther said the following concerning his translation method: One who would talk German does not ask the Latin how he shall do it; he must ask the mother in
11178-516: The direction in which he was taking the Soviet Union , found strong echoes in the German party under the leadership of Ernst Thälmann . August Thalheimer was increasingly critical and spent much of the 1920s being kept out of the way in Moscow. He became ill and returned to Germany late in 1927, however. As an intellectually formidable representative of the party's "anti-Stalin" right wing he
11316-519: The eastern provinces of Banat , Bukovina , and Transylvania (German: Banat, Buchenland, Siebenbürgen ), German was the predominant language not only in the larger towns—like Temeschburg ( Timișoara ), Hermannstadt ( Sibiu ), and Kronstadt ( Brașov )—but also in many smaller localities in the surrounding areas. In 1901, the Second Orthographic Conference ended with a (nearly) complete standardization of
11454-647: The end of the Revolution: it is identical with the victory of the great million-strong masses of the socialist proletariat. The link to the council movement that emerged in 1918 and Rosa Luxemburg's theory of the spontaneity of the working class as the motor of revolution thus became the determining factors for the Spartacus League's theory of revolution. At the Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils, only ten of 489 delegates represented
11592-570: The face of the party discipline of the SPD in the Reichstag. The Spartacus Group had severely criticized them at the time. The Spartacus Group hailed the February 1917 revolution in Russia as a victory for its own cause that was important for Europe and the whole world. It did not however mention the Bolsheviks and remained uninfluenced by them. Rosa Luxemburg saw educating German workers about
11730-482: The failure of the revolution. The leadership of the East German Communist Party followed the prescriptions from the time of its founding and thus did not interpret the Spartacus League as a revolutionary party, but rather emphasized its weaknesses and organizational shortcomings. In this way it justified the necessity of a centralized cadre party for a successful revolution. Otto Grotewohl held
11868-579: The former leaders of the Spartacus League of which in many ways the Communist Party was a continuation, although by the end of January 1919 the two most prominent of these had been killed by " Freikorps " volunteers. Bertha Thalheimer took on responsibilities for guiding the women's activities in the party. Thalheimer married the mechanic Karl Wilhelm Schöttle in 1920: the marriage ended in divorce in 1933. While her brother , for
12006-448: The group: Martha Arendsee , Fritz Ausländer, Heinrich Brandler , Käte Duncker , Otto Gäbel, Otto Geithner, Leo Jogiches , Karl Liebknecht, August Thalheimer and Bertha Thalheimer . The International Group saw the SPD's approval of the war loans as a betrayal of the goals of pan-European social democracy and especially of the international solidarity of the workers' movement against the war. It maintained its pre-war goals and rejected
12144-435: The home, the children on the streets, the common man in the market-place and note carefully how they talk, then translate accordingly. They will then understand what is said to them because it is German. When Christ says ' ex abundantia cordis os loquitur ,' I would translate, if I followed the papists, aus dem Überflusz des Herzens redet der Mund . But tell me is this talking German? What German understands such stuff? No,
12282-498: The hope of securing better peace conditions from the Allies of World War I . The reforms strengthened the Reichstag and the parliamentary form of government, but the emperor still appointed the chancellor and retained command authority. On 7 October 1918 the Spartacus Group reacted to the reforms and to the SPD's participation in them with an illegally held Reich conference in Berlin. There a revolutionary program against war and capitalism
12420-612: The imperial military, local governments, and large industrial enterprises. They were not subordinate to a party and, unlike the Russian soviets, did not serve to pave the way for the exclusive control of any one party. In anticipation of the end of the war, Karl Liebknecht was released from prison under an amnesty on 23 October 1918. He joined the executive council of the Berlin Revolutionary Stewards on 26 October and planned mass demonstrations with them to launch
12558-481: The influence of Luther's Bible as an unofficial written standard, a widely accepted standard for written German did not appear until the middle of the eighteenth century. German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire , which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe . Until the mid-nineteenth century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of
12696-625: The interim it had delegates elected from throughout Germany. Many arrived in Berlin as early as 29 December, and on the same day a majority of them decided to found a new party. Above all, the Polish guest Karl Radek convinced most of the representatives of the Spartacus League, the Bremen left-wing radicals and the International Communists of Germany (IKD) of the prospects and the necessity of unifying. In doing so Radek contradicted
12834-405: The intra-party dictatorship for the way they impeded and stifled the democratic participation of workers in the revolution. The other Spartacists deferred public criticism of the Bolsheviks out of loyalty. Paul Levi did not publish Luxemburg's essay until 1922, three years after the author's death. The Spartacus Group remained organizationally and politically independent of the Bolsheviks until it
12972-493: The largest concentrations of German speakers are in the states of Rio Grande do Sul (where Riograndenser Hunsrückisch developed), Santa Catarina , and Espírito Santo . Bertha Thalheimer Bertha Thalheimer was born in Affaltrach in southern Germany, a short distance to the east of Heilbronn . Moritz Thalheimer, her father, was a prosperous businessman and real estate agent with an active interest in politics. He
13110-474: The means they considered most effective". The SPD had explicitly and repeatedly opposed an imperialist war in Europe, approved measures against it and announced them publicly. During the July crisis of 1914 that followed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary , it reaffirmed its rejection of war in nationwide large-scale demonstrations by its supporters. On 4 August 1914, just days after
13248-402: The mother in the home and the plain man would say, Wesz das Herz voll ist, des gehet der Mund über . Luther's translation of the Bible into High German was also decisive for the German language and its evolution from Early New High German to modern Standard German. The publication of Luther's Bible was a decisive moment in the spread of literacy in early modern Germany , and promoted
13386-434: The next few weeks the Spartacus League tried to influence political developments in this direction with its daily newspaper Die Rote Fahne ( The Red Flag ). In the first issue Rosa Luxemburg called for the nationwide abolition of the death penalty as a first step toward fundamental judicial and social reform. From 10 December she advocated a soviet republic and the controlled disarmament of soldiers by workers' councils. This
13524-653: The ninth century, chief among them being the Muspilli , Merseburg charms , and Hildebrandslied , and other religious texts (the Georgslied , Ludwigslied , Evangelienbuch , and translated hymns and prayers). The Muspilli is a Christian poem written in a Bavarian dialect offering an account of the soul after the Last Judgment , and the Merseburg charms are transcriptions of spells and charms from
13662-401: The order was received from Gustav Noske in agreement with SPD leader Fredrich Ebert Franz Mehring died at the end of January 1919 and in March 1919 Leo Jogiches was murdered in prison after being arrested while investigating the deaths of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. With the deaths of four of the founders of the Spartacus League, its history came to an end. The Spartacus League had advocated
13800-475: The police. In 1916 the group expanded its organization throughout the Reich. On 1 January it adopted as its program the " Guiding Principles on the Tasks of International Social Democracy " ( Leitsätze über die Aufgaben der internationalen Sozialdemokratie ) that Rosa Luxemburg had written while in prison. On 27 January the first of the illegal "Spartacus Letters" appeared. They detailed the group's goals and gave it
13938-439: The popular name "Spartacus" that its members adopted, calling themselves the "Spartacus Group". The minority of declared opponents of the war within the SPD parliamentary group had grown to 20 by December 1915. Karl Liebknecht was expelled from the party in January 1916, Otto Rühle resigned in solidarity with Liebknecht, and the 18 other dissenters were expelled in March 1916. Meanwhile, the Spartacus Group gained new members. Among
14076-462: The pronunciation of the ending -ig as [ɪk] instead of [ɪç]. In Northern Germany, High German was a foreign language to most inhabitants, whose native dialects were subsets of Low German. It was usually encountered only in writing or formal speech; in fact, most of High German was a written language, not identical to any spoken dialect, throughout the German-speaking area until well into the 19th century. However, wider standardization of pronunciation
14214-473: The prospect for a successful German revolution. Luxemburg distanced herself from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) that ended the war between Germany and Russia, as well as from the supplementary agreement to it of 27 August 1918. She found the terrorist measures of the Bolsheviks under Felix Dzerzhinsky repugnant. In September 1918 she called the threats made by Lenin's friend Karl Radek to "slaughter
14352-652: The reformism of the majority social democrats and Lenin's one-party system and its tendencies toward a state bureaucracy after Russia's October Revolution. In March 1919 the KPD became a member of the Communist International , which at that time was dominated by the Bolsheviks, and from then on followed its political line more closely. After Lenin's death, the KPD leadership increasingly followed Stalin's ideological course and excluded his critics, including former Spartacists such as Paul Levi, August Thalheimer, Heinrich Brandler and others. The "left opposition",
14490-470: The regional socialist newspaper "Göppinger Freie Volkszeitung" for which August Thalheimer became the editor. By 1914, Bertha Thalheimer had become a member of the regional SPD party executive. War broke out in July 1914. The decision by the party leadership, citing "defense of the fatherland", to implement what amounted to a parliamentary truce ( "Burgfriedenspolitik" ) on votes involving funding for
14628-416: The revolution as the Spartacus Group's most important task at the time. From the summer of 1917 she and Leo Jogiches criticized the Bolsheviks' putschist policies against Alexander Kerensky 's government. They also rejected Lenin 's and Leon Trotsky's pursuit of a separate peace with the German Empire because they thought that such a peace would endanger both international proletarian opposition to war and
14766-498: The revolution will “rise up again, clashing its weapons,” and to your horror it will proclaim with trumpets blazing: I was, I am, I shall be! On 15 January the two most important Spartacists and KPD leaders, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were captured and murdered by members of the Freikorps Guard Cavalry Rifle Division . Freikorps officer Waldemar Pabst gave this order, who stated that
14904-429: The revolutionary goals they had jointly agreed on. They therefore resigned from the interim government on 29 December 1918. Because of Ebert's actions and the behavior of the USPD, which was criticized as fickle and inconsistent, the Spartacus League decided on 22 December 1918 to hold a Reich congress in Berlin on 30 December to discuss the founding of a party, the relationship to the USPD, and parliamentary elections. In
15042-494: The solidarity of all revolutionary forces and a permanent commitment to the goals of the Communist Manifesto . Until the founding of the KPD, it saw itself as part of a class-conscious international social democracy which rests on the shoulders of the working mass of the people, meaning that working class organizations needed to express and enforce its will. The Spartacus League's founders had therefore criticized both
15180-418: The start of World War I, the Reichstag voted on loans to fund the war. The SPD's Reichstag membership voted unanimously in favor of both the loans and Burgfriedenspolitik , a policy of political truce under which the parties would support war loans and not criticize the government or the war, and the trade unions would not strike. Even Karl Liebknecht , an outspoken anti-militarist, voted in favor because of
15318-546: The states of North Dakota and South Dakota , German is the most common language spoken at home after English. As a legacy of significant German immigration to the country , German geographical names can be found throughout the Midwest region , such as New Ulm and Bismarck (North Dakota's state capital), plus many other regions. A number of German varieties have developed in the country and are still spoken today, such as Pennsylvania Dutch and Texas German . In Brazil,
15456-500: The third most commonly learned second language in the United States in K-12 education. The language has been influential in the fields of philosophy, theology, science, and technology. It is the second most commonly used language in science and the third most widely used language on websites . The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in
15594-404: The view formulated by Liebknecht a week earlier: "The National Assembly means nothing other than a formal political democracy. It does not at all mean that democracy which socialism has always demanded. The ballot is certainly not the lever by which the power of the capitalist social order can be unhinged." On 5 January 1919, the Berlin armaments factories' Revolutionary Stewards, who had organized
15732-412: The vote on war loans, she invited the SPD opponents of the war who were her friends to her Berlin apartment. The evening meeting on 4 August 1914 was attended by six guests who, together with Luxemburg, formed the nucleus of the later Spartacus League: Hermann Duncker , Hugo Eberlein , Julian Marchlewski , Franz Mehring , Ernst Meyer and Wilhelm Pieck . In the following week, a number of others joined
15870-404: The war as an imperialist genocide by the ruling bourgeoisie directed against the interests of the peoples of Europe and the proletariat. The idea of a withdrawal from the SPD that was contemplated by some International Group members was quickly discarded since it was expected that the government would soon ban the SPD's activities and that the SPD majority would then abandon the political truce. It
16008-535: The war was contentious within the party from the outset. An antiwar group quickly emerged in the Württemberg SPD with Clara Zetkin , Fritz Westmeyer and the Thalheimer siblings at its heart. They quickly linked up with the party's pacifist group at a national level, becoming known as the International Group, and headed up by Karl Liebknecht and their friend Rosa Luxemburg . In 1915 Bertha Thalheimer
16146-555: The world being published in German. German is most closely related to other West Germanic languages, namely Afrikaans , Dutch , English , the Frisian languages , and Scots . It also contains close similarities in vocabulary to some languages in the North Germanic group , such as Danish , Norwegian , and Swedish . Modern German gradually developed from Old High German , which in turn developed from Proto-Germanic during
16284-600: The written form of German. One of the central events in the development of ENHG was the publication of Luther's translation of the Bible into High German (the New Testament was published in 1522; the Old Testament was published in parts and completed in 1534). Luther based his translation primarily on the Meißner Deutsch of Saxony , spending much time among the population of Saxony researching
16422-429: Was a "neutral" language as there were virtually no English native speakers in Namibia at that time. German, Afrikaans, and several indigenous languages thus became "national languages" by law, identifying them as elements of the cultural heritage of the nation and ensuring that the state acknowledged and supported their presence in the country. Today, Namibia is considered to be the only German-speaking country outside of
16560-657: Was a co-founder of the anti-war Spartacus League , and was one of the organisers of its launch conference held in Berlin in January 1916. In September 1915, together with Ernst Meyer , she represented the league at the Zimmerwald Conference , an international conference of socialist pacifists held near Bern in Switzerland . She also represented the Spartacus League six months later at the follow-up Kienthal Conference . The conferences demanded an immediate peace, without territorial annexations. They called on
16698-465: Was absorbed into the KPD. It came closer to them politically only in the course of the November Revolution in Germany, when it decided in December 1918 to found a separate party with other left-wing radicals. This was in response to the USPD's rejection of a party congress proposed by Luxemburg. In October 1918 the German government passed a series of constitutional and legislative reforms , in part in
16836-523: Was administered as part of the American zone. Bertha tried to arrange a job and a return from exile for her brother. However, with Cold War tensions rising rapidly as the Soviet Union consolidated its hold on central Europe, the military authorities were not willing to import a high-profile communist intellectual into Germany's US occupation zone, and when August Thalheimer died in September 1948 it
16974-501: Was adopted. Its demands were: The demands for the democratization of the army were particularly detailed, as this was seen as the key to a successful revolution: The Spartacus Group issued a Reich-wide leaflet with these demands. It stressed that they were a touchstone for the democratic intentions of the MSPD, whose entry into the wartime government it regarded as a betrayal of the workers' interests. The Spartacus Group made reference to
17112-547: Was an artificial standard that did not correspond to any traditional spoken dialect. Rather, it was based on the pronunciation of German in Northern Germany, although it was subsequently regarded often as a general prescriptive norm, despite differing pronunciation traditions especially in the Upper-German-speaking regions that still characterise the dialect of the area today – especially
17250-679: Was arrested for "anti-military activities" ( wegen "antimilitaristischer Tätigkeit" ): in October 1917 she was convicted on charges of high treason by a Stuttgart court, which sentenced her to two years in prison. Her co-accused, Cläre (or Klara) Thalheimer, was acquitted. Bertha served more than a year of the sentence in Castle Delitsch near Halle which had been adapted for use as a jail. War ended in military defeat for Germany in November 1918. A wave of revolutions broke out across
17388-516: Was because on 6 December the first exchange of fire had occurred between Reich soldiers and the supporters of the USPD and the council movement. Behind the event was the secret 10 November 1918 Ebert-Groener pact in which the chairman of the interim government, Friedrich Ebert, had agreed with Quartermaster General Wilhelm Groener of the Supreme Army Command to take swift action against leftist uprisings in exchange for an assurance of
17526-431: Was categorised as an Aryan , and Bertha Thalheimer were now divorced, although she continued to receive material support from her former husband. Meanwhile her brother emigrated, initially to France and ultimately to Cuba . Bertha remained in Germany, under constant threat of persecution but nevertheless well supported by friends. At one stage she was earning a living by selling coffee from door to door. In 1941 she
17664-660: Was close to some of the leading Social Democrat left-wingers of his generation, including Clara Zetkin and the Mehrings . Thanks to her father's political connections she also met the pioneering thinker Rosa Luxemburg fairly early on. Bertha was almost precisely one year older than her brother August who grew up to become a Marxist philosopher and, like her, a political activist. As long as they both lived, Bertha and her brother would be closely aligned politically. The family relocated to Winnenden in 1892 and then, to Cannstatt in 1899. Here she completed her schooling at
17802-488: Was decided to organize the struggle against the war within the SPD, to persuade the SPD majority to reject further war loans, and to restore international solidarity with other European workers' parties. The group's first step was to send 300 telegrams to SPD members urging them to publicly reject the SPD Reichstag faction's 4 August resolution. Only Clara Zetkin responded immediately and unreservedly in favor. Among
17940-401: Was distrusted by the party leadership and, early in 1929, expelled from the German party . Bertha Thalheimer, who shared her brother's rejection of domination of the party from Moscow, was expelled from the German party at about the same time. A large number of people were expelled from the Communist Party in 1929 and many of them joined a newly formed alternative communist party known as
18078-492: Was established on the basis of public speaking in theatres and the media during the 20th century and documented in pronouncing dictionaries. Official revisions of some of the rules from 1901 were not issued until the controversial German orthography reform of 1996 was made the official standard by governments of all German-speaking countries. Media and written works are now almost all produced in Standard German which
18216-657: Was forcibly transferred into a so-called "Jews House" ( ein "Judenhaus" ) in Stuttgart . In 1943 she was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp . She survived. After she was liberated by the Soviet army in May 1945, Bertha Thalheimer immediately returned to Stuttgart and rejoined the no-longer outlawed Communist Party . What remained of Germany was now divided into four military occupation zones . Stuttgart
18354-456: Was highly controversial. The leading Spartacus members Rosa Luxemburg, Paul Levi, Leo Jogiches, Käte Duncker, and hesitantly also Karl Liebknecht, were in favor of the KPD participating in the upcoming elections. Otto Rühle and the IKD, on the other hand, strongly opposed participation. Their motion to boycott the elections received a majority of 62 votes to 23. The majority of the party congress shared
18492-480: Was in danger of becoming a tool of Soviet foreign policy, and while levels of support for its successor in the Soviet zone are hard to determine objectively, in the American, British and French occupation zones, declining levels of support suggest widespread disenchantment with it. Disappointed, Bertha Thalheimer left the Communist Party (again) in 1948. She joined the new Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik organisation which
18630-705: Was in many respects a survivors' revived version of the old KPO . The group took its world political outlook largely from the writings of the format KPO policy man, Bertha's brother, August Thalheimer who was dying in Cuba during this time. Within the trades union movement of the zones which became, after May 1949, the German Federal Republic (West Germany) , the group promoted a robustly anti-Stalinist version of socialism. From 1952 Bertha Thalheimer took responsibility for Arbeiterpolitik's newspaper. However, Thalheimer's health had been permanently damaged by
18768-404: Was intended to express a higher level of organization and at the same time to distinguish it from the USPD. In the November Revolution the Spartacus League fought for taking power from the military, the socialization of key industries and the creation of a soviet republic as a future German state. Rosa Luxemburg wrote its platform, which called for immediate measures to protect the revolution: Over
18906-515: Was still as a German exile, still in Cuba . His widow, Bertha's sister in law Cläre, now left Cuba with her son: her destination was not Germany, however, but Australia , where she settled in Wandiligong and made a new life for herself as a teacher. A series of troubling events in the Soviet occupation zone between 1945 and 1948 gave rise to suspicions that the Communist Party of Germany
19044-418: Was the first and initially the only SPD deputy in the Reichstag to vote against the extension of the war loans. In January 1915, Otto Rühle and a number of others spoke out against the war and the party majority's affirmation of the war within the SPD parliamentary group. In March 1915 the group published a magazine under the name Internationale , which appeared only once and was immediately confiscated by
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