Clara Zetkin: biography and personal life

Everyone heard that the so-loved holiday of March 8 has a relationship of Wild Clara - the revolutionary Clara Zetkin. Biography, the personal life of this woman is controversial among historians and not only.

Clara's detailed biography is the history of the entire international movement of workers. Clara Zetkin, biography, March 8, sexual revolution and the image of a woman of modern times - all this will be discussed in this article.

The talented Clarenc

This girl, nee Eisner, was born the fifth child in an advanced family in 1857 in Saxony. Father, Gottfried, stayed in the small town of Videnau, giving up the career of an organist in Leipzig. There, for a minute, he could play on the organ of Bach himself. Together with his wife, Josephine, he worked as a teacher at school and played on a simple organ in a local church.

The idol of the five-year Clara was the hero of the medieval Reformation, burned in the inquisitor's fire by Jan Hus. At the age of nine, the girl remembered Shakespeare in memory and taught the Homeric Iliad.

Clara was noticed by Augusta Schmidt, the owner of the elite women's pedagogical gymnasium in Leipzig. Today we would say that Augusta gave her a grant for training. At that time, it was very prestigious to study free and to finish this school. The director was confident that Clara would become the star of pedagogy. But alas, she became a star, but in quite a different constellation.

Happy Clara

The name of Clara was replaced solely out of her love for her civil husband, Osip Tsetkin. With thirty-year-old Osip, a Russian emigrant, Clara met at a secret meeting of the Social Democratic circle. There was born her love for a man and for the liberation movement of the working class.

In 1880, Osip was arrested by the German police. The verdict is to leave the country. He left for France, and two years later, Clara left her family and joined him in Paris.

There came a period of life full of revolutionary activity, love and devotion. Lived poorly. Osip and Clara made remittances, she also worked part time as a teacher of German. However, even the pregnant Clara did not miss the meeting of the Social Democratic Union. During this period she gave birth to two sons, she studied revolutionary theory and became a prominent figure on the political Olympus of the Social Democratic Party.

The period of Paris ended when, in 1889, Osip died of spinal cord disease.

The sons of Maxim and Kostya gave her the strength to live on. "I can not - it does not exist!" - this was her motto in those difficult years, Clara Zetkin told the children. Biography confirms the motto. In the same year she appeared at the International Socialist Congress with her famous speech on the need to fight for the rights of women.

Germany and Clara Zetkin

Biography of a fiery revolutionary, for the fervor of the nicknamed Wild Clara, continues in her homeland. She is forced to return, and now her motto is "I work, work, work - day and night!". She is the editor of the magazine "Glyhait, a newspaper in defense of the interests of female workers."

Twenty-five years, until May 1917, she will visit factories and plants, poor houses, write thousands of articles, organize rallies and participate in them. And when she talks about the labor movement and the struggle for rights, she blossoms and becomes unusually beautiful!

Doubtful alliance

She is forty-six, he's twenty-eight. She is a prominent Social Democrat, he is an apolitical artist. She doubted it, but in 1898 the decision was made for her by her adult sons (the eldest only four years younger than her stepfather), and Clara became the wife of Georg Friedrich Cundel, although she did not change her surname.

Marriage at first seemed successful. Both were quite successful in their profession, they were able to buy a house in the suburbs of Stuttgart and a small villa in Switzerland (VI Lenin liked to see the view from the windows), and soon became owners of an object of unprecedented luxury - a car.

The crack formed during the period of prolonged illness of Clara. Since 1900, vision began to deteriorate, since 1905 - several operations to remove cataracts, after which she did not quite recover. In 1914, Frederick, in spite of Clara, the enemy of the war, volunteered for the front.

And although the reason is not only that she did not forgive her husband of the betrayal of her political convictions, but that he had a young mistress for a long time already, the gap took place. But the Wild Clara took revenge on George, giving him a divorce, only when she was 71 years old.

Almost blind revolutionary

Almost blind and exhausted by operations, Clara Zetkin did not stay away from the revolutionary movement. Her biography is full of anti-war activities, which leads to the arrest in 1915 on charges of espionage and treason to the state. Under the pressure of the people and because of illness Clara was released on bail, which did not stop her active activity.

Her antiwar statements lead to party conflicts, but Clara is happy - she is in the thick of things. Since 1920, she represented the Communist Party in the Reichstag. Since 1932, when Hitler, who came to power, banned all left-wing parties, decisions were made on emigration to the USSR. Then she visits the pioneer camp. Later in the series ZHZL there is a book by Hanna Ilberg "Klara Zetkin. Biography".

She lived in a sanatorium near Arkhangelsk, died in 1933, was buried near the Kremlin wall.

"A woman is a man of a masculine gender," said Clara Zetkin

A brief biography draws us the image of a fiery and purposeful revolutionary. But women will be surprised that today's image of a business lady, combining professionalism with the preservation of family values, is proposed and argued by Clara Zetkin.

She as one of the first feminists is credited with establishing the celebration of the international women's day. Although Clara's speech at the Second Conference of Socialist Women in Copenhagen in 1910 was not very romantic. Then she called for voting for the choice of a certain day, when women will make demands to protect their rights. And it is far from always peaceful.

And about the ideas of sexual emancipation of women, the promotion of the best fighters of the revolution, developed and proposed by fellow revolutionaries Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, we must speak separately.