Clara Zetkin Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Clara Zetkin, born Clara Esner (1857–1933), was an influential German socialist and one of the pioneer feminist activists. Until 1917 she was active in the Social Democratic Party. Thereafter she joined the Independent Social Democratic Party and its far-left wing, the Spartacist League, which later became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Zetkin represented the KPD in the Reichstag during the Weimar Republic period from 1920 to 1933.

Zetkin was born in Wiederau, Saxony, to Jewish parents. At the age of twenty-one she met Osip Zetkin, a Russian émigré, and joined his Socialist Workers Party, which evolved into the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1890.When Chancellor Otto von Bismarck banned socialist activity in Germany, the Zetkins fled first to Zurich, Switzerland, and then to Paris, France, where they played an important role in the formation of the Socialist International group. She also adopted the name of her lover (although they never married), with whom she had two sons. Osip died in 1889 and later Zetkin married Georg Friedrich Zundel.

Zetkin formed an alliance with Marxist theorist and philosopher Rosa Luxemburg and worked with her closely in opposing German political theorist Eduard Bernstein. She was very interested in women’s rights and was responsible for launching the Social Democratic Women’s Movement in Germany and editing the SPD magazine, Die Gleichheit (Equality). She was the leading theorist, after German social scientists Friedrich Engels and August Bebel, of the so-called women’s question in the international socialist movement before World War I (1914–1918). She started the International Women’s Day in 1911 and headed the Women’s Office in the SPD. In 1907 she founded the Socialist Women’s International organization. During World War I, Zetkin refused to collaborate in war efforts and was arrested several times. Even among socialists she was considered extremely radical. She never wrote a book, but many of her positions were outlined in speeches and articles in the bimonthly magazine Die Gleichheit.

During Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power, Zetkin was a member of the Reichstag as a representative of the German Communist Party and its Central Committee. She was also a member of the Communist International from 1921 to 1933. In 1925 she was elected president of the German left-wing solidarity organization, Red Aid. After the arson attack on the Reichstag building in 1933, which led Hitler to blame and ban the Communist Party, Zetkin went into exile for the last time to the Soviet Union. She died in Moscow in 1933 and is buried near the Kremlin.

Bibliography:

Evans, Richard J. The Feminists:Women’s Emancipation Movements in Europe, America, and Australia, 1840–1920. London: Croom Helm, 1977.
Comrades and Sisters: Feminism, Socialism, and Pacifism in Europe, 1870–1945. Sussex, U.K.:Wheatsheaf, 1987.
Honeycut, Karen. “Clara Zetkin: A Socialist Approach to the Problem of Women’s Oppression.” In European Women on the Left: Socialism, Feminism, and the Problems Faced by Political Women, 1880 to the Present, edited by Jane Slaughter and Robert Kern, 32, 40.Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981.

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