She was born as Clara Eißner in the small village of Wiederau in Saxony, Germany. The daughter of the village teacher and a housewife was confronted at a very early age with the then awful conditions of the workers living in the area. She succeeded in becoming one of the first German women to receive teacher training due to her mother's connections. She was taught at the teacher training college led by the women's rights activist Auguste Schmidt in Leipzig and qualified with distinction. In Leipzig she joined a circle of Russian students and became acquainted with her later husband Ossip Zetkin. New socialist ideas were discussed within this circle, and social-democratic articles read and congresses visited. Clara took up the ideas of the German Social Democratic Party (SAP). 1878 was the year of the social laws in Germany. Chancellor Bismarck passed a law "Against Attempts of Social Democracy Dangerous to the Community", and against all its organisations, press and the unions it had set-up.

Clara took on various positions as a private tutor where, due to her non-compromising position, she quickly made enemies and quit. Following a police raid during a secret socialist conference, Ossip Zetkin was arrested and ordered out of the country.

Clara moved to Paris in 1883. Although she took on his name, she did not marry him so as to retain her German citizenship. Her two children Maxim and Kostja were born there. The family lived at subsistence level and only managed to survive due to the solidarity of Russian friends also committed to the socialist movement. In the years during her stay in Paris, Clara Zetkin learnt the job of journalist and translator. She became acquainted with the leader of the international worker's movement, expanded her horizons and acquired knowledge of the basics of Marxism. As Ossip became dangerously ill, Clara experienced the hardest times of her life. In addition to caring for the children and supporting the family she cared for her husband who was paralysed on one side and who died in 1889.

At the II Internationale in 1889 in Paris, which she had helped to organise, Zetkin held a lecture on women's issues which contributed to binding women into the socialist movement even more strongly. Her book, "Die Arbeiterinnen- und Frauenfrage der Gegenwart" (Contemporary Issues Concerning Women Workers and Women), which appeared in the same year, laid the foundation stone for the socialists' women's emancipation theory. Here she upheld the theory that socialism and feminism are closely connected. Zetkin sharply defended the right of a woman to work, also against her own comrades, who meant that women's work should be abolished, as it forced down men's wages. The expanded socialist theory up until that point concerning women's issues concentrated on women needing to be liberated from the male position of leading power.

The socialists laws were repealed in 1890. Zetkin returned to Germany. In 1892 she was offered the editorship of the social-democratic newspaper for women "Die Gleichheit", which she headed up for 25 years. At the same time she began editing the women's supplement in the "Leipziger Volkszeitung". She turned this organ into the spiritual centre and mouth-piece of the growing proletariat women's movement. She attempted to politicise women workers in the sense of socialism.

Clara Zetkin fought for the economic independence of women workers and women in general. As a consequence the right to the same wages for the same work was linked to union organisation, the representation of interests and state child care. At the same time, women were to receive the same political rights. She stood up for the women's voting right campaign later than the civil women's movement, but with vehemence, and spoke in favour of this demand being taken up in the German Social Democrat programme. The International Day of Women, first celebrated in 1911, was staged thanks to her suggestion.

At the same time Zetkin stood up for an improvement in the role of women in the family. Until that time "the life of the woman had existed under the sign of subordination to the family". In contrast marriage was meant to develop into a union of couples with equal rights who enrich one another reciprocally. Both husband and wife are both responsible for raising the children, which should take place free of gender-specific stereotypes.

Zetkin approved of divorce, "free love" and abortion as private decisions and stood up against double morals. She married the 18 year younger poet and painter Friedrich Zundel in 1900 and lived with him and her two sons in Stuttgart.

As the leaders of the social democrats approved of the war, Zetkin opposed this decision in public and fought against their reformist course from the outset. Her having pamphlets distributed airing the demands of the women's conference to end the war in Germany led to her arrest and being accused of treason. However due to massive protests she was released from prison.

The party-internal argument concerning the direction to be taken by the German social democrats that had flared up concerning the question of war ended in a division: The group of "radical leftists" around Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg formed the so-called "Independent Social Democrat Party (USPD)" in 1917, which later became the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany. Clara Zetkin, who was a close friend of Luxembourg, also belonged to this group. She was sacked from her position as editor of "Die Gleichheit" as a result. She was a member of the Central Committee in the KPD from 1919 to 1924 where the represented the moderate wing of the party. She started building up the KPD women's movement at the same time. She started editing women's newspapers affiliated to the party again (for instance "Die Kommunistin"). In 1921 she was announced head of the West European International Women's Secretariat of the Comintern in Berlin at the Second International Women's Conference.

Further information:  Excerpts from Clara Zetkin's Speeches

From 1920-1933 she sat as the elected member for the KPD in the German parliament, of which she was president by age. In this role she warned in a now-famous speech of the dangers of national socialism as early as in 1932 and demanded the coalition of all democratic forces: "The order of the hour is the unified front of all workers in order to force back fascism so that the enslaved and exploited retain the force and power of their organisations, and even their bodily lives. All binding and separating political, union, religious and philosophical views must step back in the face of this cogent historical necessity. All those threatened, all those suffering, all those who thirst for liberty belong in the unified front against fascism and its representatives in government!" Her permanent place of residence was Moscow from 1924. Here she headed up the Women's Secretariat of the III Internationale. As an opponent of Stalin she fell into political isolation although she was the object of official honours. Even at a high age and marked by illness she remained politically active until her death in 1933 in Archangelskoje. She was laid to rest in the walls of the Kremlin.

[Author: Dorette Wesemann, Edited by: Ragnar Müller]

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