The New International Encyclopædia/Liebknecht, Wilhelm

LIEBKNECHT, lēp'knĕKt, Wilhelm (1826-1900). A German social democrat, born at Giessen. He studied in the university there and at Berlin and Marburg. In 1848 he took part in the revolt in Baden; was imprisoned, but escaped in May of 1849, going first to Switzerland and then to London. There he earned his living as correspondent for German newspapers and as a member of the Communistenbund, associated with Marx and Engels. In 1862 he took advantage of the amnesty, returned to Germany, and began to write for the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. But in 1865 he was banished from Berlin and Prussia for socialistic agitation. Two years later he was elected to the North German Parliament, and in 1868 he began to edit the Demokratisches Wochenblatt, in which he attacked Bismarck so bitterly that in 1872 he was imprisoned for two years, with his fellow-editor Bebel. But before he was released he had been elected to the German Reichstag. Save for brief periods he sat there until his death. In 1879 he was elected to the Second Chamber of the Saxon Legislature. He was editor of the Berlin Vorwärts from 1890 to 1900, and in 1895 was imprisoned for four months on the charge of lèse majesté. He wrote: Zur Grund- und Bodenfrage (1876); Ein Blick in die neue Welt (1886), relating his impressions of a trip to the United States made in that year; Robert Blum und seine Zeit (2d ed. 1890); Geschichte der französischen Revolution (1890); Die Emser Depesche (5th ed. 1892); Robert Owen (1892); and Volksfremdwörterbuch (7th ed. 1894).