Political Walking Tour: Rosa Luxemburg’s Berlin

“Berlin has made the most unfavorable impression on me.” It is 1898 and Rosa Luxemburg has just arrived in the capital of the German Empire. She describes it in a letter as: “cold, tasteless, massive — a real barracks; and the dear Prussians with their arrogance, as though every one of them had the stick up their ass with which they had once been beaten…” Fair to say it isn’t love at first sight, but Luxemburg stays here until the bitter end. Berlin is her home for the next two decades.

On January 15, 1919, Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by proto-fascist paramilitaries under the orders of a social democratic government. 106 years after one of the most infamous political assassinations of the 20th century, we are going to take a walking tour through Luxemburg’s Berlin: where she lived, where she spent long nights writing during the revolution of 1918, where she went into hiding as the counter-revolution closed in.

Our tour will be meeting at Mehringplatz in Kreuzberg, on the north side of the square at the exit of U6 Hallesches Tor, where the escalator goes up toward Friedrichstraße. We will meet at 16:00 and leave by 16:10.

The tour will end roughly 2h45m later, after two trips on the U-Bahn, in Friedenau.

Suggested donation is 15 euros per person, but any contribution is appreciated and none is required. You can also pick up a signed copy of the guide book Revolutionary Berlin. You can also get a copy of the kids book “Little Rosa Luxemburg Starts a Big Revolution.”