One day before his violent death, Karl Liebknecht, council communist and one of the leaders of the Spartacus uprising in Berlin, wrote a dramatic appeal to the workers urging them not to give up the revolutionary struggle. The title of this manifesto, Trotz Alledem! [In spite of everything] would become proverbial.
No sound recording of Karl Liebknecht’s voice has survived, but there is an early spoken version of "Trotz Alledem". It was probably recorded by the famous theatre director Erwin Piscator in 1929 and then copied to a gramophone record by Van Wouw Studio’s in Amsterdam. A digitized version is listed in the IISH’s catalogue and can be heard here.
[The text of Trotz Alledem appeared in Die Rote Fahne on 15 January 1919; the words are from a poem by Ferdinand von Freiligrath]