Kostya Zetkin

Rosa Luxemburg and Kostja Zetkin (1909)

Konstantin "Kostja" Zetkin (born April 14, 1885 in Paris , † September 1980 in Middle Point , Halfmoon Bay , Canada ) was a German doctor, economist and politician. He was a son of Clara Zetkin and at times the lover of Rosa Luxemburg .

Life

Kostja Zetkin was born in Paris as the son of Ossip and Clara Zetkin . In 1891 the family moved to Germany. Like his brother Maxim Zetkin, he attended the Karls-Gymnasium in Stuttgart . Despite initial language difficulties, he was later able to study in Berlin on the advice of Rosa Luxemburg , with whom he had a love affair between 1907 and 1915. During his studies he was a “subtenant” with Rosa Luxemburg. First he decided to study political economy , later he followed his brother and studied medicine .

Before the end of his studies he had to take up military service on March 5, 1915 . First he served as a medical sergeant, later as a field medical officer and field medical assistant on the Western Front , at the Battle of the Somme , in Verdun and Reims . For his services he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class on November 10, 1916 .

After military service, he completed his medical studies and passed with distinction in 1923. In 1923 he was one of the initiators of the establishment of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt / Main, along with Karl Korsch , Georg Lukács , Richard Sorge and others . He was one of the participants in the Marxist Work Week in May 1923. For a time he was editor-in-chief of the newspaper Die Gleichheit . He later supported his sick mother as, as he called himself, a "technical assistant". After the NSDAP came to power in Germany , the Zetkin family fled to the Soviet Union . After his mother's death there were disputes over her estate and he ran into problems with representatives of the Soviet government. He therefore fled via Czechoslovakia to France , where he was not allowed to work as a doctor and had to earn his living as a masseur and nurse. After the occupation of France in World War II, he was imprisoned but was released. In 1945 he went to the United States and worked in various psychiatric institutes and sanatoriums in New York and Illinois. In the 1950s he moved to Middle Point, BC, Canada, where he lived with his wife on his stepson's farm.

meaning

The weekly newspaper Die Zeit wrote about the literary and political significance of Kostja Zetkin : The most important first publication are the letters from Rosa Luxemburg to Kostja Zetkin (1885-1980). Unfortunately, the editors of the more than 600 letters received because of their "predominantly private and intimate Character "around 70 not included and occasionally" minor omissions "made. This reluctance is hardly understandable, especially when one realizes that the published letters are often quite "private-intimate" in character.

The Berliner Morgenpost reported on the premiere of the Grips Theater :

“Rosa Luxemburg was unmarried all her life, she almost always had younger lovers. She spent her happiest time with Kostja Zetkin, the son of her best friend Clara Zetkin , says Regine Seidler . That was a very intimate love affair . This aspect did not occur in the GDR. Then it was said that Rosa Luxemburg had a maternal relationship with her subtenant . An interesting description. "

literature

• Letters to Kostja Zetkin from 1893 to 1905 . In: Rosa Luxemburg - Collected Letters , published by the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED, 5 volumes, Dietz Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1982–1984.
• Volume 6 of the "Collected Letters" with the letters to Kostja Zetkin, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1993, which were unpublished in GDR times

Web links

• Clara Zetkin and the Communist International Letter Kostja Zetkins to Elisabeth Mayer, a friend of the family

Individual evidence

1. ^ Telephone book, Sechelt Public Library
2. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from January 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ ^{a b} biography of the main state archive in Stuttgart
4. ↑ http://www.trend.infopartisan.net/trd7899/t057899.html
5. ↑ personal communication from the step-son Peter Bennett
6. ↑ hinfetscher: Rosa Luxemburg in her letters: Even in prison consolation for others . In: The time . No. 41/1984 ( online ).
7. ↑ http://www.morgenpost.de/kultur/article972960/