The numbers spoke for themselves. Around 2,500 people from across Germany and neighbouring countries descended on Berlin for the 19th Rosa Luxemburg conference - the highest attendance ever.

Another 280 volunteers were mobilised to help.

Simultaneous translation in four languages ensured that this year's anti-war, anti-imperialist message was relayed to the massive audience.

But the socialist paper behind the event - German daily Junge Welt - has a recent history that competes with the Morning Star's in the roller-coaster stakes.

Current editor Arnold Schölzel had set out the rocky road back to recovery at a landmark summit 24 hours earlier that brought together four of Europe's left-wing dailies for the first time.

Once the biggest-selling paper in East Germany, following reunification Junge Welt saw its sales plummet from 1.6 million to 16,000 almost overnight.

A million euros was embezzled from the paper in the chaos that followed the takeover of eastern assets by the west.

When the dust had settled Junge Welt stood on the brink of extinction.

But with a fundraising campaign and a core band of supporters the title was bought and, bar the occasional setback, it has pushed its way upwards ever since.

Its operation is impressive - particularly its public presence - not least in Germany's increasingly paranoid anti-socialist environment.

And the jewel in the crown is the Rosa Luxemburg conference, held each year the day before the mass pilgrimage to her grave and that of fallen comrade Karl Liebknecht, the final resting place of the pair who were tortured and murdered by the right-wing nationalist Freikorps militia following a post-WWI socialist uprising.

Today they lay buried alongside many other socialists and Marxists who refused to bow to the forces of the right.

Each year, on the second Sunday in January, thousands attend a march to their burial site in east Berlin, many hundreds queuing patiently in line to lay red carnations in honour of the fallen.

It is a mixture of the solemn and the defiant, mourning the losses of the past and standing proud despite a relentless propaganda onslaught against the left.

With the backdrop of a Europe-wide assault on social security, common ownership and working conditions, and an era of overseas military intervention, the reasons for the attack on socialist ideas couldn't be clearer.

Nor could the need for international co-operation to draw the parallels between the identical policies of national governments and the European Union against working-class people, and to share strategies and analysis while forging the fightback.

Representatives of all four papers gathered in the offices of Junge Welt, a stone's throw from east Berlin's iconic television tower, a day earlier to take the first steps towards a new era of co-operation.

As journalists from each paper shared their histories, thoughts, and plans, the similarities became increasingly striking.

From Denmark, Abedjeren (The Worker) set out their bold plans to redesign, embrace new technology and integrate the internet and print editions on a shoestring.

They were a precise match for the Morning Star's.

Each paper had their own equivalent to our Fighting Fund.

Each is of a similar physical size. Each was seeking to mobilise and organise readers to help them to take on the capitalist press.

The Morning Star, Abedjeren's news editor Freja Wedenborg explained, had itself inspired a radical redesign of the title with a bolder, more tabloid approach.

Introductions over, the real business of planning our future co-operation began.

Technology-sharing, information exchange and joint supplements were proposed and agreed.

Even bolder plans were discussed. These will now be taken forward by a new international working group.

And while each paper's political context and precise agenda is unique, in Wedenborg's words our discussions "confirmed how much we have in common."

"We have taken the first steps in a great comradeship between our four newspapers," she says.

In this common era of austerity, racism, war and misinformation, that international comradeship can't come soon enough.

Newspapers present at the Berlin meeting were Luxembourg's Zeitung vum Lëtzebuerger Vollek, Junge Welt, Arbedjeren, and the Morning Star