"To the Editor:
Vivian Gornick referred to Rosa Luxemburg’s partner Leo Jogiches as a “sociopath.” Jogiches was undoubtedly a jealous and domineering personality. He once threatened Luxemburg with a gun for not breaking off an affair with another man. Despite growing apart personally, however, Jogiches and Luxemburg collaborated politically until her death.
Paul Frölich, in his definitive biography of Luxemburg, did not describe Jogiches in Gornick’s terms. Indeed, Frölich approvingly quoted the German Communist leader Clara Zetkin’s comment that Jogiches was “one of those very masculine personalities — an extremely rare phenomenon these days — who can tolerate a great female personality in loyal and happy comradeship, without feeling her growth and development to be fetters on his own ego.”
After Luxemburg’s murder in the aftermath of the failed Spartacus uprising, Jogiches devoted himself to preserving her writings and, not long afterward, was himself executed. To label him a “sociopath” elevates his all-too-typical personal failings above his lifelong political collaboration with Rosa Luxemburg.
DON MEADE
MANHATTAN"
Vivian Gornick referred to Rosa Luxemburg’s partner Leo Jogiches as a “sociopath.” Jogiches was undoubtedly a jealous and domineering personality. He once threatened Luxemburg with a gun for not breaking off an affair with another man. Despite growing apart personally, however, Jogiches and Luxemburg collaborated politically until her death.
Paul Frölich, in his definitive biography of Luxemburg, did not describe Jogiches in Gornick’s terms. Indeed, Frölich approvingly quoted the German Communist leader Clara Zetkin’s comment that Jogiches was “one of those very masculine personalities — an extremely rare phenomenon these days — who can tolerate a great female personality in loyal and happy comradeship, without feeling her growth and development to be fetters on his own ego.”
After Luxemburg’s murder in the aftermath of the failed Spartacus uprising, Jogiches devoted himself to preserving her writings and, not long afterward, was himself executed. To label him a “sociopath” elevates his all-too-typical personal failings above his lifelong political collaboration with Rosa Luxemburg.
DON MEADE
MANHATTAN"
