Arrondissement 18
Number 21
Rosa Luxemburg lived at No. 21 when she first came to Paris in 1893 to start researching her doctorate and to edit the Polish Social Democratic party newspaper, The Workers’ Cause.
Aged 23, she stayed initially in Paris with the 26-year-old Adolf Warski (Warszawski) and his wife. Warski was the theoretician of Polish communism and founder of the Polish Communist Party (KPP) from 1918.
In 1929, with Marshal Piłsudski’s dictatorship tightening, Warski left Poland for Moscow. A critic of Stalinisation, he was arrested and executed the same day, August 21 1937.
A memorial plaque to Rosa Luxemburg was erected on the house on International Women’s Day 2010 with the support of the Socialist majority on the Paris City Council.
Ironically, the road these revolutionaries lived in was named after the rich bishop of Beauvais, Jean-François-Hyacinthe Feutrier (1785-1830). He had owned the land on which the road was first built in 1835 and was also a curé at the church of the Madeleine.