Mathilde Jacob

– ran an editing and translation office in the Tiergarten district of Berlin; prior to 1914 she worked for, among others, Karl Radek, and had been Rosa Luxemburg’s confidante since 1913. Co-founder of the KPD; was a member of the USPD and SPD from 1922. Worked closely with Karl Paul Levi, the KPD’s first chairman, up until 1930. Levi’s sister Jeanette Herz and Angelica Balabanoff tried to bring Jacob to the United States after 1933, but she wanted to secure Rosa Luxemburg’s estate before emigrating. She was finally able to secure it in 1939, but did not escape and became a victim of the Holocaust in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt at the age of 70. Mathilde Jacob is commemorated by a relief sculpture on Franz Mehring Platz in Berlin; the square in front of the town hall of the Berlin district of Tiergarten was named after this Jewish Berliner in 1995 – against the opposition of the local Christian Democratic Union (CDU).