Arthur Rosenberg

Arthur Rosenberg (19 December 1889 – 7 February 1943) was a German Marxist historian, writer, and politician. He served in the Reichstag from 1924 to 1928.

Biography

Early years Arthur Rosenberg was born on 19 December 1889 in Berlin to an assimilated Jewish merchant family from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, though he was baptized as a Protestant. He excelled at the Askanisches Gymnasium before studying at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin with Otto Hirschfeld and Eduard Meyer.

Rosenberg established himself as an expert in Roman constitutional history and held a PhD (1911) in ancient history and archeology.

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.

Political career

After Germany's defeat in 1918 and his demobilization from the army, Rosenberg joined the new Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD). He went on to join the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1920.

When further factionalism swept the German Communist Party, Rosenberg maintained an ultra-left wing line as part of a factional group that included Werner Scholem, Iwan Katz, and Karl Korsch. This group fell into disfavor in Moscow from June 1925, however.

Works Imperial Germany: The Birth of the German Republic, 1871–1918. Oxford University Press (1931), translation by Ian Morrow (*1896), original: Die Entstehung der deutschen Republik, Berlin, 1930 A History of Bolshevism: From Marx to the First Five Years' Plan. (1932) Fascism as a Mass Movement. (1934) A History of the German Republic, 1918–1930. (1936) Democracy and Socialism: A Contribution to the Political History of the Past 150 Years. (1938)