Rosi Wolfstein
| Rosi Wolfstein Rosi Wolfstein-Frölich |
|
|---|---|
| Born |
Alma Rosali Wolfstein 27 May 1888 Witten, Westphalia, Germany |
| Died | 11 December 1987 Frankfurt am Main, West Germany |
| Occupation | Activist & politician |
| Political party |
SPD Spartacus League/USPD KPD KPDO SAPD |
| Spouse(s) | Paul Frölich |
| Parent(s) | Samuel Wolfstein (1843–1901) Klara (née Adler, 1851–1938) |
Rosi Wolfstein (after 1948, Rosi Frölich: 27 May 1888 - 11 December 1987) was a German socialist politician.
After the murder of her friend and mentor, the communist pioneer Rosa Luxemburg, she inherited Luxemburg's copious collection of papers, and devoted much time to organising the archive. During the 1930s, with her partner Paul Frölich, Rosi Wolfstein worked on an important biography of Luxemburg.
Alma Rosali Wolfstein was born at Witten, then a industrial city west of Dortmund in the Ruhr region. Her father, Samuel Wolfstein (1843–1901), was a businessman. She was one of her parents' four recorded children. Her elder brother, Paul, later died in the First World War: later still, in 1942, both her sisters, Wilhelmine and Bertha, would be deported to Auschwitz concentration camp and murdered.
On leaving the local secondary school Wolfstein undertook a commercial training and embarked on a career as an office worker. In 1908 a legalised female participation in politics, and Wolfstein lost no time in joining the Social Democratic Party of Germany ("Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / SPD). She had already, the previous year, joined the in Hagen. In 1910 she joined the National Employees Association ("Zentralverband der Angestellten" / ZdA), part of the Free Trade Union grouping. By 1913 she had become an SPD party activist in her native Lower Rhine region.
It was in 1910 that she first came across Rosa Luxemburg, four years her senior and already established and respected within the party. On meeting Luxemburg, Wolfstein later wrote she was at once in awe and initially disappointed, because Luxemburg was so small in stature and so different from the woman Wolfstein had expected her to be. Initial disappointment was quickly replaced by respect as the two became friends, each recognising in the other a shared political outlook. Between 1912 and 1913 Wolfstein studied as one of Luxemburg's pupils at the in Berlin. For nine years, till 1919, the two of them worked closely together on political matters. One thing they had in common was a talent for public speaking, and the evening before the 1912 General Election - in which their SPD won twice as many votes as the next placed party - Luxemburg and Wolfstein, described by one admirer as a woman of small stature and extraordinary presence, shared a platform at the final major pre-election event.
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