Arthur Rosenberg (19 December 1889 – 7 February 1943) was a German Marxist historian and writer. 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. Rosenberg emerged as an important theoretician for the dissident left wing of the KPD in their ongoing factional struggle with the party leadership headed by Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer. 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 the Weimar state. 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 the 5th Congress of the Communist International and a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) that same year. Rosenberg denounced the Dawes 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". 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. In electing a new Central Committee the German party was invited by ECCI "to have no fear of drawing into