Photograph © Barbara WolffClaudia Horn is a lecturer in political economy at the Department of European and International Studies at King's College London. Her research explores the politics of development, ecological transition, and global inequalities, particularly market-based conservation and nature-based solutions. Her book manuscript, Where Money Grows on Trees: European Carbon Politics in the Brazilian Amazon, under review, examines the impacts of environmental aid on land conflicts. 

A letter from Rosa Luxemburg while in prison to Kostya Zetkin

Berlin, April 10, 1915

Niuniu, darling, I hope you will get this letter promptly on your birthday. I enclose as a gift a picture of Mimi, which I got yesterday and which gave me great joy. The young doctor who is keeping her is an acquaintance of Miss [Mathilde] Jacob, he wanted to photograph Mimi with his camera, but he himself had to hold her in place. I did order a book for you from Wertheim, but he has not yet sent it; as soon as it comes, you’ll get it. I hope that on Sundays sometimes you will have the time and the desire to read for a few hours. With the 10 marks, which will come to you additionally, you must buy yourself something good, I certainly can’t do it, unfortunately. Probably one cannot have flowers in the barracks, so buy something else. I thought that perhaps a fountain pen might be of use to you. I personally can’t stand such an implement, for me it belongs in the same category as the thermometer, but out in the field [on military duty] it could really be useful to a person.

Niuniu, just think, I am doing botany again here! I have my albums [for dried flowers] with me, as well as the botany book by Fünfstück and the small atlases from you, and sometimes I get a few flowers myself or in a letter from Miss Jacob, who is in Thuringia for Easter. I have started a new album for dried flowers (the eleventh one!), and as the first little flower in it I inserted the snowdrop from Niuniu for March 5. That was the “greater snowdrop”—Leucojum vernum. The “lesser snowdrop” has three little inner leaves in the corona, not pointed, but in scooped-out heart shapes, with three little green lines on each; in Berlin this snowdrop is sold on the streets in large quantities, but I don’t think you have it in your garden. It has such a pretty name: Galanthus nivalis. Just think, this plant family (the Amaryllidaceae) includes not only the snowdrop and the narcissus—but also the large agave! If you find daphne or the “scylla,” which I am not familiar with, or something else pretty, send it to me in a letter. Miss Jacob has also sent me a cowslip, which has very soft down, and a goldstar, which is very beautiful. Are you familiar with it?

It occurred to me how quickly we have become impatient and whiny when for a time we encounter prison or the barracks or difficulties of any kind, but Cervantes, for example, spent so many long years in outright slavery. Human beings are able to endure much more as individuals, on their own, than as “heroes” to whom the masses look out of slavish obedience. I don’t know who has recently got me thinking about Cervantes, but somewhere I read an expression of boundless amazement over Don Quixote. Was it perhaps something written by Goethe?

Niuniu, I am sending a newspaper item for you about Easter Island. I am fascinated by this name, and above all by the “mystery” of the giant stone heads. Did you know something about this, and can you make any suppositions about it? Surely this island was merely part of an older, submerged continent, which perhaps was once connected with the coast of Chile. But what about the fact that all these stone figures are looking out to sea? But wait! Maybe this was just an April Fool’s joke by the Berliner Tageblatt, could that be it?

I embrace you, Niunia

Photograph © Barbara WolffClaudia Horn is a lecturer in political economy at the Department of European and International Studies at King's College London. Her research explores the politics of development, ecological transition, and global inequalities, particularly market-based conservation and nature-based solutions. Her book manuscript, Where Money Grows on Trees: European Carbon Politics in the Brazilian Amazon, under review, examines the impacts of environmental aid on land conflicts. 

A letter from Rosa Luxemburg while in prison to Kostya Zetkin

Berlin, April 10, 1915

Niuniu, darling, I hope you will get this letter promptly on your birthday. I enclose as a gift a picture of Mimi, which I got yesterday and which gave me great joy. The young doctor who is keeping her is an acquaintance of Miss [Mathilde] Jacob, he wanted to photograph Mimi with his camera, but he himself had to hold her in place. I did order a book for you from Wertheim, but he has not yet sent it; as soon as it comes, you’ll get it. I hope that on Sundays sometimes you will have the time and the desire to read for a few hours. With the 10 marks, which will come to you additionally, you must buy yourself something good, I certainly can’t do it, unfortunately. Probably one cannot have flowers in the barracks, so buy something else. I thought that perhaps a fountain pen might be of use to you. I personally can’t stand such an implement, for me it belongs in the same category as the thermometer, but out in the field [on military duty] it could really be useful to a person.

Niuniu, just think, I am doing botany again here! I have my albums [for dried flowers] with me, as well as the botany book by Fünfstück and the small atlases from you, and sometimes I get a few flowers myself or in a letter from Miss Jacob, who is in Thuringia for Easter. I have started a new album for dried flowers (the eleventh one!), and as the first little flower in it I inserted the snowdrop from Niuniu for March 5. That was the “greater snowdrop”—Leucojum vernum. The “lesser snowdrop” has three little inner leaves in the corona, not pointed, but in scooped-out heart shapes, with three little green lines on each; in Berlin this snowdrop is sold on the streets in large quantities, but I don’t think you have it in your garden. It has such a pretty name: Galanthus nivalis. Just think, this plant family (the Amaryllidaceae) includes not only the snowdrop and the narcissus—but also the large agave! If you find daphne or the “scylla,” which I am not familiar with, or something else pretty, send it to me in a letter. Miss Jacob has also sent me a cowslip, which has very soft down, and a goldstar, which is very beautiful. Are you familiar with it?

It occurred to me how quickly we have become impatient and whiny when for a time we encounter prison or the barracks or difficulties of any kind, but Cervantes, for example, spent so many long years in outright slavery. Human beings are able to endure much more as individuals, on their own, than as “heroes” to whom the masses look out of slavish obedience. I don’t know who has recently got me thinking about Cervantes, but somewhere I read an expression of boundless amazement over Don Quixote. Was it perhaps something written by Goethe?

Niuniu, I am sending a newspaper item for you about Easter Island. I am fascinated by this name, and above all by the “mystery” of the giant stone heads. Did you know something about this, and can you make any suppositions about it? Surely this island was merely part of an older, submerged continent, which perhaps was once connected with the coast of Chile. But what about the fact that all these stone figures are looking out to sea? But wait! Maybe this was just an April Fool’s joke by the Berliner Tageblatt, could that be it?

I embrace you, Niunia