The approval of the Reichstag faction of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) for war credits on August 4, 1914, marked the starting point for the party's split into three parts: the war supporters, who managed to rally the majority of the members behind them; the war goal critics, who came together as the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) during Easter 1917; and the radical left, which fundamentally rejected the war and formed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the November Revolution of 1918. Today, it is largely forgotten that the KPD was not only composed of the Spartacus group around Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, and Karl Liebknecht, but that there was also a second source party: the International Communists of Germany. Equally forgotten is the driving force behind this source party: Johann Knief (1880-1919), the leader of the Bremen left radicals, an independent thinker and actor, teacher, editor, and music critic. Since the beginning of the war, Knief fought not only against the SPD leadership but also against the moderate left. He was the first to advocate for the formation of a radical left party as early as 1915. He passed away in April 1919 at the age of thirty-nine from a delayed appendicitis. When his wife retrieved his urn from the office of the Bremen KPD in 1926, the comrades had long forgotten their comrade.