The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-WarCurtin, D. Thomas (Daniel Thomas)
History
The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-War
Curtin, D. Thomas (Daniel Thomas)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Herr Dittmann's second case was that of Frau Rosa Luxemburg. He
said that she was put under arrest many months ago, without any
charge being made against her, and merely out of fear of her
intellectual influence upon the working classes. All the Socialist
women of Germany were deeply indignant, and he invited the
Government to consider that such things must make it the positive
duty of Socialists in France, England, Italy and Russia "to fight
against a Government which imprisons without any reason the
best-known champions of the International proletariat." The
treatment of both Mehring and Frau Luxemburg had been terrible.
The former, old and ill, had had the greatest difficulty in getting
admission to a prison infirmary. Frau Luxemburg a month ago was
taken from her prison bed in the middle of the night, removed to
the police headquarters, and put in a cell which was reserved for
prostitutes. She had not been allowed a doctor, and had been given
food which she could not eat. Just before the Reichstag debate she
had been, taken away from Berlin to Wronke, in the Province of
Posen.
Herr Dittmann then gave a terrible account, some of it unfit for
reproduction, of the treatment in prison of two girls of eighteen
whose offence was that on June 27th they had distributed
invitations to working women to attend a meeting of protest against
the procedure in the case of Herr Liebknecht. He observed that
they owed it entirely to themselves and to their training if they
had not been ruined physically and morally in their "royal Prussian
prison." When they were at last released they were informed that
they would be imprisoned for the rest of the war if they attended
any public meeting. Herr Dittmann proceeded:--
"Here we have police brutality in all its purity. This is how a
working-class child who is trying to make her way up to knowledge
and _Kultur_ is treated in the country of the promised 'new
orientation,' in which (according to the Imperial Chancellor) 'the
road is to be opened for all who are efficient.' These are the
methods by which the spirit of independence is systematically to be
billed. That is the reason for the arrests of members of the
Socialist party who stand on the side of determined opposition.
You imagine that by isolating the leading elements of the
opposition you can crush the head of the snake."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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