Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), militante socialiste et communiste, théoricienne marxiste, assassinée - Rare lettre autographe signée en français à l'éditeur Pierre-Victor Stock - 1906

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), socialist and communist activist, Marxist theorist, assassinated during the Spartacist repression.
ALS “Dr Rosa Luxemburg,” Berlin, October 5, 1906, 2 pages, 8vo.

To the publisher Pierre-Victor Stock (1861-1943), who published many anarchist authors:
“Sir,
In Hamburg has just appeared a German pamphlet on the General Strike and Trade Unionism, written by me and based on the experience of the Russian Revolution. This pamphlet will soon be translated into Russian and Dutch. Mr Victor Mayer has suggested translating it into French and asks whether you would undertake the edition. The said pamphlet contains 4 sheets (16 pages) in small German type, which will be about 7 1/2 pages in French.
Please let me know if the proposal suits you and what your terms would be.
Please accept, Sir, my thanks and best regards.
Dr Rosa Luxemburg".

Victor Mayer is a Russian Jew, born November 11, 1878 in Irkutsk, who studied in Kiev in 1900, who emigrated with his family, presumably to escape anti-Semitism. He took the name Victor Remay, was a noted speaker and became the speaker for the Seine Socialist Federation. He was therefore in contact with Rosa Luxemburg, who was also a Jew who had left Russian territory (she was born in Zamosc, present-day Poland but then in Russia). However Mayer seems never to have translated the work and Victor Stock refused upon receipt of the letter as indicated by the note “refused October 8, 1906.”

The work was nevertheless translated in 1910 under the title The Mass Strike, the Party and the Trade Unions (Ghent, Cooperative Society “Volksdrujjerij,” 1910). This translation was by Alexandre Bracke-Desrousseaux (1861-1955), who thus became the first translator of Rosa Luxemburg into French. They had met at international socialist congresses.
A new edition appeared in 1964 under the title Mass Strikes, the Party and the Trade Unions (Paris, Marpéro, 1964).

Interesting correspondence around her work. Rosa Luxemburg’s letters are very rare.

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