Topic summary
Spartacist uprising
Independent Social Democratic Party of GermanyGustav Noske
Karl LiebknechtRosa Luxemburg20 wounded
130–180 killedThe Spartacist uprising (German: Spartakusaufstand), also known as the January uprising (Januaraufstand) or, more rarely, Bloody Week, was an armed uprising that took place in Berlin from 5–12 January 1919. It occurred in connection with the German revolution that broke out just before the end of World War I. The uprising was primarily a power struggle between the supporters of the provisional government led by Friedrich Ebert of the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD), which favored a social democracy, and those who backed the position of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, which wanted to set up a council republic similar to the one established by the Bolsheviks in Russia. The government's forces were victorious in the fighting.
The death toll was roughly 150–200, mostly among the insurgents. The most prominent deaths were those of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who were executed extrajudicially on 15 January, almost certainly with at least tacit approval of the MSPD-led government. The party's involvement hampered its position throughout the life of the Weimar Republic, although quashing the uprising allowed elections for the National Assembly to take place as scheduled on 19 January 1919. The Assembly went on to write the Weimar Constitution that created the first national German democracy.
The uprising took its popular name from the Marxist Spartacus League (Spartakusbund), which Luxemburg and Liebknecht founded in 1914. When the KPD was established on 1 January 1919, the Spartacus League became part of it. Some historians, such as Heinrich August Winkler and Sebastian Haffner, consider the name to be misleading because the Spartacists (KPD) had neither wanted, planned, nor led the revolt.