On January 15, 1919 political turmoil which followed end of the First World War as well as the abdication of Wilhelm II seemed to have reached its peak as leaders of German Communists, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, hunted down in Berlin by ultra-rights groups and SPD supporters, were captured and brutally murdered.

After moving from one place to another for days to escape the right-wing bloodhounds and their voluntary helpers (Berlin newspapers were full of texts calling for no less than a lynch of the Communist leaders), Luxemburg’s and Liebknecht’s last refuge was the flat of a friend, Siegfried Marcussohn, in Mannheimer Straße 43 (now No. 27), in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. There they were eventually captured by five men from local Bürgerwehr (Citizen Guard) who, in reality, were first and foremost spies of the paramilitary right-wing militia, in this case the Regiment “Reichstag”. The captured politicians were brought to the “Hotel Eden” in Kurfürstendamm (now Budapester Straße).

The “Eden” served as a headquarters of the Garde-Kavallerie-Schützen-Division led by Waldemar Pabst. Pabst claimed to have been commissioned to kill Luxemburg and Liebknecht by Gustav Noske, People’s Council member and the future Minister for Defence in Friedrich Ebert’s government. The “Eden”, as it turned out, was just a stop-over on the way to their execution.

Karl Liebknecht was executed in Tiergarten. Waiting for her “turn”, Luxemburg first hemmed her torn skirt and then read Goethe’s “Faust”. As she was being led out of the hotel (too many witnesses), one Otto Runge crashed her skull with the butt of his rifle. Unconscious (possibly dying) Luxemburg was thrown into a waiting car and shot as soon as the vehicle was at a safe distance from the crowds.

Rozalia Luxemburg’s (her real name – she was a Polish Jew born under Russian occupation – was in fact Rozalia Luxenburg – the “m” was allegedly a spelling mistake made by a registry office clerk) body was thrown into the Landwehrkanal and not found until several months later on May 31, 1919 (the corpse most probably stayed a long time under ice). During hers and Liebknecht’s funeral on 25 January 1919, Luxemburg’s coffin was empty.

But whatever happened to Luxemburg’s and Liebknecht’s murderers? Were they ever punished or were forced to take any responsibility for the killings? Hardly. Pabst, befriended with Canaris, Göring and many wealthy German industrialists, worked in arms trade before and after the Second World War. His guilt was held for virtue by the future Generalmajor of the Bundeswehr and the man who took part in creating the post-war secret service of the Federal Republic of Germany, Achim Oster. Pabst died a wealthy man in 1970 in Düsseldorf

Kurt Vogel, for years held for Luxemburg’s killer (as it turned out, he “only” drove the car she was shot in), fled from Berlin-Moabit prison on November 17, 1919, helped by none other than Wilhelm Canaris. Vogel fled to the Netherlands. After Hitler’s amnesty for Luxemburg’s and Liebknecht’s killers, he got his sanatorium fees paid from taxpayers’ money. Vogel died in 1967.

Horst Pflugk-Hartung, in 1919 an office of the notorious Garde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision (Freikorps troops) and very much active at the “Eden” Hotel, was spoken free by the military tribunal in the infamous 1919 trial. He first fled to Sweden (assisted by the seemingly indefatigable Wilhelm Canaris again), then spied on German expats in Denmark until expelled. During the Second World War he joined the Nazi navy troops until he landed in a US war camp. Released from the camp, he spent the years 1950-1967 living the life of a “respectable” wealthy businessman in Hamburg.

Heinz Pflugk-Hartung (Horst’s brother), like Waldemar Pabst, joined the right-wing troops again during the attempted coup known as the Kapp-Putsch. He died in a “hand grenade incident” as he was – following the Chief of Staff for the Reichswehr, General von Seeckt’s, orders – shooting Communists and coup-opponents (plus whoever was unlucky enough to be anywhere near his post in Köpenick and Berlin-Friedrichshagen) in March 1920.

Otto Runge, who crashed Luxemburg’s skull with the butt of his rifle, served two years. In late May 1945 he was arrested by the NKWD – the new name he was hiding behind proved to be poor disguise. On June 3rd Herr “Wilhelm Radloff”, was interrogated in the NKWD-basement in Fröbelstraße, and shortly after that commenced his not exactly voluntary “journey East”. He most likely did not survive the trip.

As for Hermann Souchon, who killed Rosa Luxemburg by shooting the deadly injured woman at point blank, he fled to Finnland 1920 (you might not find it surprising who helped him), then returned after Hitler’s amnesty, cashed damages for the time he was forced to spend in prison, and made a career in the Luftwaffe. After the war , like so so many others of his kiln, Souchon enjoyed good and prosperous life until his death in 1982.

A small plaque commemorating Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht was installed next to the fountain on today’s Olof-Palme-Platz, close to where the Eden Hotel once stood and where the two politicians were held immediately before being murdered. Two more memorials – one not far from the hotel site, at the Landwehrkanal (where Luxemburg’s body was discovered) and one in the Tiergarten, where Liebknecht was murdered – are the reminders of what happens, when in political discourse – no matter how hard, how harrowing and how exhausting – we take the worst possible shortcut and replace words with hatchets.