Right-wing groups had been agitating against German Communists and their leaders even before the January uprising. The
Anti-Bolshevist League printed posters and appeals to the population of Berlin calling for the Bolshevik ringleaders to be found and handed over to the military. A high reward was offered. One leaflet that circulated in large numbers proclaimed: The Fatherland is close to ruin. Save it! It is not threatened from outside, but from within: from the
Spartacus League. Strike their leaders dead! Kill Liebknecht! Then you will have peace, work and bread. –The frontline soldiers.After the uprising was crushed, the Spartacist leaders feared for their lives and went into hiding. The government sought them out as alleged putschists in order to prosecute them for the attempted coup before the 19 January elections. Fritz Henck, Philipp Scheidemann's son-in-law, publicly assured the residents of Berlin on 14 January that the leaders of the uprising "would not get off scot-free". In just a few days, he said, it would become clear "that things will get serious for them, too". On the evening of 15 January, Luxemburg and Liebknecht were found in the apartment of a friend, Dr. Markussohn, in Berlin-
Wilmersdorf by the Wilmersdorf Citizens' Militia, arrested and taken to the Eden Hotel. Their whereabouts had probably become known through the telephone surveillance that Noske had ordered. Liebknecht was taken from the hotel shortly after Luxemburg and after getting into a waiting car was knocked almost unconscious, again by Otto Runge. The car stopped in the Berlin
Tiergarten, Liebknecht was forced out then shot in the back as a "fugitive". His body was handed over to a Berlin police station as the "corpse of an unknown man". KPD leader Wilhelm Pieck was able to obtain an order to have himself transferred to a prison and escaped en route.
Reactions On 16 January the Berlin press reported that Liebknecht had been shot while fleeing authorities and Luxemburg lynched by an angry crowd. The basis for the account was a document that Pabst had written on the evening of the murders and had published as an official report from his division. After knowledge of the murders became public, the government called a special meeting at which Ebert is said to have expressed his shock at the murders of the former SPD party comrades he had known for decades. MSPD representatives feared an expansion of the uprisings as a result of the murders. Some briefly considered resigning. Noske, on the other hand, in a 1923 retrospect described the people who had been murdered as the main culprits in the revolution's degeneration into civil war. Thousands had asked beforehand "if no one would render the troublemakers harmless".
Leo Jogiches, Luxemburg's former companion, took over the leadership of the KPD after her death and tried to shed light on the murders. In an article in the party's (
The Red Flag) newspaper on 12 February 1919, he revealed the names of some of those his own research led him to suspect of being involved. He was arrested in March 1919 during additional Freikorps operations against left-wing workers' leaders and murdered in prison.
Legal proceedings Criminal proceedings against alleged perpetrators were not instigated right away. On 16 February 1919, KPD members began demanding an independent investigation by a non-military special court because they feared suppression of evidence. It was not until May 1919 that some of the perpetrators – including Otto Runge and Kurt Vogel – were brought before a military field court of their own division. The main trial took place from 8 to 14 May 1919. There was repeated testimony that a "ministry aiding the MSPD" had offered a bounty of 100,000 marks for the capture of the Spartacus leaders. Wilhelm Pieck was one of the most important witnesses of the incidents at the hotel that led up to the murders. He and a number of employees of the hotel had been aware of the mistreatment that took place before the murders and overheard telephone calls between officers and their superiors. Pieck testified that he saw "an officer, addressed by the others as 'captain' walking around offering cigarettes to the soldiers and saying, 'The gang must not leave the Eden Hotel alive!' ... A short time after that, a maid came up, fell into the arms of a colleague, and exclaimed, 'I'll never be free of the image of that poor woman being knocked down and dragged around.'" Runge received two years in prison, Vogel 28 months. The officers involved, the brothers Heinz and
Horst von Pflugk-Harttung, were acquitted. Their commander Pabst was not charged, and others who had possibly given orders were not sought out. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Noske personally confirmed the verdicts with his signature. Vogel was taken out of Moabit Prison on 17 May, three days after the sentencing, by a Lieutenant Lindemann for transfer to
Tegel Prison. Lindemann was in fact Captain Lieutenant (and later Admiral)
Wilhelm Canaris, who took Vogel to the Netherlands by car. Canaris was never prosecuted for the action. Representatives of the KPD and USPD, along with some from the MSPD and the liberals, regarded the military trial and verdicts as a judicial scandal. Attempts to challenge the verdict and reopen the trial in a higher court were put off. All the remaining members of the Revolutionary Committee were imprisoned but later released for lack of evidence showing that they were planning an armed coup. It was not until 1929 that Paul Jorns, who had been the military judge in the trial, was dismissed for bias.
Post-Weimar In 1934, the
Nazi regime granted Runge compensation for his imprisonment and Vogel convalescence using taxpayers' money. In January 1935, the National Socialists leveled the graves of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, possibly also disposing of their bones. Runge, recognized and beaten by workers in 1925 and 1931 after his release from prison, was tracked down by members of the KPD in Berlin in May 1945 and handed over to the Soviet commandant's office on the instructions of senior prosecutor Max Berger. Runge was charged with murder, although his health later deteriorated, and he died in custody in September 1945. The journalist and right-wing politician
Eduard Stadtler stated in his 1935 memoirs that the murders were contract killings. He wrote that on a visit to Pabst on 12 January he had "requested the murders from him" and that Pabst told him later who had carried them out. Pabst also indicated that he had been in contact with Noske. In 1959 Pabst had a conversation with Günther Nollau, later vice president of the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, who recorded what Pabst said: "During that time, he [Pabst] had heard Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg speak in Berlin. Wearing civilian clothes, he mingled with the crowd. His observations led him to the conclusion that the two were extraordinarily dangerous and that there was no one on their side to counter them. He therefore decided to get rid of them." In 1962 Pabst stated in an interview with
Der Spiegel that Noske had permitted the murders and afterwards covered up the lack of prosecutions. In 1970 a letter was found in Pabst's estate in which he wrote: "It is clear that I could not have carried out the action without Noske's approval – with Ebert in the background – and that I also had to protect my officers. But very few people have understood why I was never questioned or brought up on charges. As a man of honor, I responded to the behavior of the MSPD by keeping my mouth shut for 50 years about our cooperation." Noske always denied the conversation overheard by Pabst in which he was said to have made an agreement to cooperate in the arrest and murder of the Spartacists.
Otto Kranzbühler, who later became the lawyer for Hermann Souchon, the man who shot Luxemburg, stated that Pabst had confirmed to him the telephone conversation with Noske. Biographers also believe that Pabst probably consulted with Noske or
Hans von Seeckt of the army command. == Consequences ==