Arthur Rosenberg (19 December 1889 – 7 February 1943) was a GermanMarxist historian, writer, and politician. He served in theReichstag from 1924 to 1928.
Arthur Rosenberg was born on 19 December 1889 inBerlin to an assimilated Jewish merchant family from theAustro-Hungarian Empire, though he was baptized as aProtestant.[1] He excelled at theAskanisches Gymnasium before studying at theFriedrich-Wilhelms-Universität inBerlin withOtto Hirschfeld andEduard Meyer.
Rosenberg established himself as an expert inRoman constitutional history and held aPhD (1911)[2] in ancient history andarcheology.[3]
In 1914, Rosenberg proved to be a conformist representative of the German academy, believing in the "ideas of 1914," and signing nationalist petitions. He then was drafted into the army, working for the Kriegspresseamt, the public relations office of the army.
After Germany's defeat in 1918 and his demobilization from the army, Rosenberg joined the newIndependent Social Democratic Party (USPD).[4] He went on to join theCommunist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1920.[4]
Rosenberg emerged as an importanttheoretician for the dissident left wing of the KPD in their ongoing factional struggle with the party leadership headed byHeinrich Brandler andAugust Thalheimer.[3] He was regarded as one of the top leaders of the party left in the city of Berlin and was an advocate of the theory that the KPD should pursue a revolutionary offensive against theWeimar state.[4]
The left wing gained control of the KPD in April 1924 and Rosenberg was elected a member of the governing Central Committee of the party as well as a delegate to the5th Congress of the Communist International and a member of theExecutive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) that same year.[3] Rosenberg denounced theDawes Plan as a plot by American capitalists to take control of the German economy. However he rejoiced that the Plan would "drive the last nails into the coffin of the German Republic". He said the Communists were ready to give the Republic the final shove so that it would "meet the fate that it deserves".[5]
When further factionalism swept the German Communist Party, Rosenberg maintained an ultra-left wing line as part of a factional group that includedWerner Scholem,Iwan Katz, andKarl Korsch.[6] This group fell into disfavor in Moscow from June 1925, however.[3] In electing a new Central Committee the German party was invited by ECCI "to have no fear of drawing into the work the best elements from former groups not belonging to the Left" — an effort to further undercut Rosenberg's factional group.[6]
Despite the criticism, Rosenberg was named a delegate to the6th Enlarged Plenum of the CI in February 1926, at which he participated.[3]
Expulsions of the left wing of the KPD followed in 1927, but Rosenberg was not himself one of those subject to such treatment.[3] Nevertheless, he quit the KPD in April 1927, moving from the political realm to the field of scholarship.[3] He taught at theUniversity of Berlin and served as the head of an organization called the League of Rights of Man.[4]
When theNazi Party came to power in 1933, Rosenberg was dismissed from his university post due to his Jewish ethnicity.[4] Rosenberg emigrated first toSwitzerland before moving on to theUnited Kingdom.
From 1934 to 1937 he taught history at theUniversity of Liverpool.[4] He proceeded to the United States in 1937 to take a professorship atBrooklyn College, where he taught and wrote until the end of his life.[4]
Arthur Rosenberg died 7 February 1943 inNew York City.
The right-wing German speaking newspaper 'New Yorker Staats-Zeitung und Herald' called his death a "hurtful surprise".[7]
