Clara Zetkin
1857-1933
- Vociferous women’s rights activist
- Prominent KPD politician
- Mother of the Reichstag - 1932
Together with Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin was a female leader of the SPD’s left wing before World War I. She became famous for her work promoting the emancipation of women. After the KPD was founded, she joined it; however, she was mostly active within the party’s right wing because she refused to follow - without any criticism - the instructions of the Communist International and the Bolshevists. From 1920 to 1933, she served in the Reichstag, where she held a courage speech warning against national socialism in 1932 as the Mother of the House. In 1933, Zetkin went into exile in the Soviet Union and died there a short time later.