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Died 16 March 1953, Frankfurt, Germany Books Rosa Luxemburg; her life and work, Rosa Luxemburg | ||
Paul Frölich (7 August 1884 – 16 March 1953) was a journalist and left wing political activist who was a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany and founder of the party's paper, Die Rote Fahne. A Communist Party deputy in the Reichstag on two occasions, Frölich was expelled from the Party in 1928, after which he joined the organized German Communist Opposition movement. Frölich is best remembered as a biographer of Rosa Luxemburg.
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Early years
Paul Frölich was born 7 August 1884 in Leipzig into a German working-class family. He was the second child of eleven. As a young man he studied history and social science at the Leipzig Workers' School.
Frölich joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1902.
Frölich's life partner from the 1920s till his death was the communist Rosi Wolfstein (1888-1987). The two were formally married in 1948.
Political career
Frölich worked as a journalist during the first decade of the 20th Century, writing for the Hamburger Echo from 1910 to 1914 and for the Bremer Bürgerzeitung from 1914 to 1916.
From 1916 to 1918, Frölich and Johann Knief together edited a political weekly called Arbeitrpolitik (Worker's Politics) which emerged as the voice of revolutionary socialism in Bremen.
Frölich was a representative of the Bremen left-wing at the April 1916 Kienthal Conference, a gathering of international socialists held at Kienthal, Germany.
In 1918, Frölich founded the newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag) in Hamburg. This was later to become the official organ of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which Frölich helped to establish at the end of December 1918. During this period, Frölich sometimes wrote under the pseudonym "Paul Werner."
The founding congress of the KPD elected Frölich to its governing Central Committee. He was re-elected to this position by the 1920 Congress of the KPD, but at the end of the year he was squeezed off the body as a result of a merger of that organization with the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD).
Following the 1921 departure of a faction led by Paul Levi, Frölich rejoined the Central Committee of the KPD.
Frölich was a delegate of the KPD to the 3rd World Congress of the Comintern, held in Moscow in the summer of 1921. Frölich was selected by the congress as the representative of the KPD to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI).
Frölich was elected as a Communist Party deputy to the Reichstag, serving in that capacity from 1921 to 1924 and again in 1928.
Frölich was expelled from the KPD in December 1928, ostensibly as a supporter of so-called "Right-wing" conciliation. Thereafter, he joined the Communist Party Opposition (KPD-O), and in 1932 helped to establish the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAP).
Imprisonment and emigration
Following the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933, Frölich was imprisoned, remaining in custody in a concentration camp in Lichtenberg until December of that year.
Following his release, Frölich emigrated to France, settling in Paris in February 1934.
Following the 1940 fall of France to the fascists, Frölich hurriedly emigrated again, this time to the United States, where he remained until after the conclusion of World War II.
Frölich returned to West Germany in 1950, where he spent the last years of his life.
Death and legacy
Paul Frölich died on 16 March 1953 in Frankfurt. He was 68 years old at the time of his death.
Frölich is best remembered as a pioneer biographer of the assassinated Communist Rosa Luxemburg. His book about her, first published in German in 1928, has been translated into a number of languages, including Spanish, English, French, Italian, Slovenian, Korean, Greek, Hebrew, and Japanese. A new edition of this work appeared in English in 2010, published by the radical Chicago publisher Haymarket Books.