Everyone has heard that Wild Clara, revolutionary Klara Zetkin, is related to the much-loved holiday of March 8th. Biography, the personal life of this woman cause controversy among historians and not only.
Clara’s detailed biography is the story of the entire international workers movement. Klara Zetkin, biography, March 8, sexual revolution and the image of a woman of a new time - all this will be discussed in this article.
Talented Clarchen
This girl was born, nee Eisner, the fifth child in an advanced family in 1857 in Saxony. His father, Gottfried, remained in the small town of Wiedenau, abandoning his career as an organist in Leipzig. There, for a minute, he could play 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 five-year-old Clara was the hero of the medieval Reformation, who was burnt in the inquisitorial bonfire by Jan Hus. At the age of nine, the girl recalled Shakespeare in memory and taught Homer's Iliad.
Clara was noticed by Augusta Schmidt, the owner of an elite female pedagogical gymnasium in Leipzig. Today we would say that Augusta gave her a training grant. At that time, it was very prestigious to study and graduate from this school for free. The director was sure that Clara would become a star of pedagogy. But alas, she became a star, but in a completely different constellation.
Happy clara
Clara changed her surname solely out of love for her common-law husband, Osip Zetkin. With thirty-year-old Osip, a Russian emigrant, Klara met at a secret meeting of the Social Democratic circle. There, her love for a man and for the liberation movement of the working class was born.
In 1880, Osip was arrested by German police. The sentence is to leave the country. He left for France, and two years later, Clara left the family and joined him in Paris.
A period of life has begun, full of revolutionary activity, love and devotion. They lived poorly. Osip and Klara earned money by translations, she still moonlighted 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, studied revolutionary theory and became a prominent figure in the political Olympus of the Social Democratic Party.
The period of Paris ended when Osip died of spinal cord disease in 1889.
The strength to live on was given to her by sons Maxim and Kostya. "I can not - does not exist!" - that was her motto in those difficult years, as Klara Zetkin told the children. Biography confirms the motto. In the same year, she spoke at the international socialist congress with her famous speech on the need to fight for women's rights.
Germany and Klara Zetkin
The biography of the fiery revolutionary, for the fervor nicknamed Wild Clara, continues in her homeland. She is forced to return, and now her motto will be “I work, work, work - day and night!”. She is the editor of the magazine Gleikhait. Newspaper in defense of the interests of women workers.
For twenty-five years, until May 1917, she will visit factories and plants, houses of the poor, write thousands of articles, organize meetings and participate in them. And when she talks about the labor movement and the struggle for rights, it flourishes and becomes unusually beautiful!
Doubtful union
She is forty-six, he is twenty-eight. She is a prominent Social Democrat, he is an apolitical artist. She doubted, but in 1898 the decision was made by her adult sons (the eldest was only four years younger than her stepfather), and Klara became the wife of Georg Friedrich Zundel, however, without changing her surname.
Marriage at first seemed successful. Both are quite successful in their profession, they were able to buy a house in the suburbs of Stuttgart and a small villa in Switzerland (V.I. Lenin liked to admire the view from the windows), and soon became the owners of an unprecedented luxury - a car.
A crack formed during a prolonged illness of Clara. Since 1900, vision began to deteriorate, from 1905, several cataract surgeries, after which she did not quite recover. In 1914, Frederick, in defiance of Clara, an adversary of the war, volunteered for the front.
And although the reason is not only that she did not forgive her husband the betrayal of her political convictions, but also because he had long had a young lover, the gap took place. But Wild Klara avenged George, giving him a divorce, only when she was 71 years old.
Almost Blind Revolutionary
Almost blinded and tormented by operations, she did not remain aloof from the revolutionary movement Klara Zetkin. Her biography is replete with anti-war activities, which leads to the arrest in 1915 on charges of espionage and treason to the state. Under pressure from the people and due to illness, Clara was released on bail, which did not stop her active work.
Her antiwar speeches 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 came to power banned all left-wing parties, decisions were made to emigrate to the USSR. Then she visits the pioneer camps. Later, in a series of ZhZL, a book by Ganna Ilberg “Klara Zetkin. Biography".
She lived in a sanatorium near Arkhangelsk, died in 1933, and was buried near the Kremlin wall.
“A woman is a man of manhood” said Klara Zetkin
A short biography paints us with the image of a fiery and purposeful revolutionary. But women will be surprised that today's image of a business woman, combining professionalism with the preservation of family values, was proposed and argued by Clara Zetkin.
She, as one of the first feminists, is credited with the establishment of the celebration of International Women's Day. Although in the speech of Clara at the Second Conference of Women Socialists in Copenhagen in 1910 there was little romantic. Then she called for a vote to choose a specific day when women will make demands to protect their rights. Moreover, it is far from always peaceful.
And the ideas of the sexual emancipation of women, the promotion of the best fighters of the revolution, developed and proposed by fellow revolutionaries Klara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, must be discussed separately.