Luise Kautsky (1864–1944)

Luise Kautsky, née Ronsperger, was born into a Jewish family in Vienna. Her father was a confectioner and she worked in his shop. She became a socialist as young woman. In 1890, she married Karl Kautsky, a socialist theorist, with whom she had three sons and lived in Stuttgart, and then in Berlin. Luise worked for the German Socialist Democrat Party (USPD) magazine Die Neue Zeit, which her husband founded and edited, and served as a city councillor in 1920-21. She became a close friend of Rosa Luxemburg. After Luxemburg's murder in 1919, Luise Kautsky collected the letters and writings that her friend had sent from jail, and published the ones addressed to herself and Karl. In 1924, she and her family moved back to Vienna. Following the Nazi Anschluss (annexation) of Austria in 1938, they fled to Prague and then to The Netherlands. In 1944, she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. Her youngest son Benedikt Kautsky survived Auschwitz and later published the rest of the letters to friends by Rosa Luxemburg that his mother had collected.