Kostja Zetkin

Kostja Zetkin with Rosa Luxemburg

1909

Konstantin "Kostja" Zetkin (14 April 1885 - September 1980) was a German physician, social economist and political activist.

He was the son of Clara Zetkin, one iconic pioneer of the political left in Germany and, for a time, the lover of another one, Rosa Luxemburg.

Life

Konstantin Zetkin, always identified as "Kostja" in family correspondence and in almost all other sources, was born in Paris. Kostja's father, Ossip Zetkin (1850-1889), was a Russian revolutionary and socialist who had suffered persecution on account of his involvement in the Narodniks movement and fled to Leipzig where, as a young man, he had supported himself as a carpenter and become active in student politics. That was how he met the trainee teacher, Clara Eißner (1857-1933). In the context of the recently enacted Anti-Socialist Laws Ossip Zetkin was arrested at a political meeting in 1880, identified as a "burdensome foreigner" ("lästiger Ausländer") and deprived of his Leipzig residence permit. He moved to Paris where, two years later, he was joined by Clara Eißner. The two had probably become lovers in Leipzig, and now they resumed their partnership. Clara adopted his family name, but the two of them never formally married. According to one source they could not marry because Ossip was unable to obtain the necessary papers from Russia: another version indicates that Clara was reluctant to enter into a marriage which would have caused her to lose her German citizenship. Their two sons, Maxim and Kostja, were born in 1883 and 1885.

Ossip Zetkin died from Tuberculosis at the start of 1889. In 1891 Clara Zetkin moved with her two boys back to Germany. Instead of returning to Saxony, where she had been born and grown up, she took her family to live in the west of the country, in Stuttgart, where she remained till the mid 1920s, and where Kostja and his elder brother grew up. At first the boys had difficulties with the German language, but they overcame any initial educational handicaps by the time they were old enough for secondary school. They both attended the well-regarded Karls-Gymnasium (secondary school) in Stuttgart, while their mother energetically pursued a political and journalistic career as an activist member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and as editor of Gleichheit, a bimonthly women's newspaper committed to gender equality.

It was presumably as a result of his mother's political activism that Kostja Zetkin met Rosa Luxemburg. He became the lover of his mother's friend in 1907, and this aspect of the relationship with Rosa Luxemburg lasted till his conscription in 1915. It was also at least partly on Luxemburg's recommendation that he studied Social Economics, while lodging in Berlin with Luxemburg as her "sub-tenant". Social economics was the subject on which Luxemburg herself lectured at the SPD Party Academy. However, at some stage Kostja Zetkin switched to the study of Medicine (which was also the subject that his brother studied between 1902 and 1908).

War was declared in July 1914 and on 5 March 1915, before he had been able to complete his medical studies, Kostja Zetkin was conscripted into the army. He served as a medical officer on the Western Front, participating in the Battle of the Somme, at Verdun and, later, at Rheims. He continued as a medical officer through several promotions, and was awarded the Iron Cross (Class II) on 10 November 1916.