orig. Clara Eissner
born July 5, 1857, Wiederau, Saxony
died June 20, 1933, Arkhangelskoye, Russia, U.S.S.R.
German communist leader.
She joined the Social Democratic Party in 1881, and she later married a Russian revolutionary exile, Ossip Zetkin (184889). From 1892 she edited the Socialist women's newspaper Die Gleichheit ("Equality") in Stuttgart. A friend of Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg , Zetkin was a cofounder of the Spartacists (1916) and later joined the new Communist Party of Germany (1919). In 1921 she was elected to the presidium of the Third International (see Comintern ). Her influence waned after Lenin's death in 1924.