Early years

Paul Frölich was born 7 August 1884 in Leipzig into a German working-class family.^[1] He was the second child of eleven. As a young man, he studied history and social science at the Leipzig Workers' School.^[2] Frölich joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1902. He had a daughter with Louise Hoppe, Edda, who was born on 5 August 1922.^[3]

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.^[1] 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.^[1] Frölich was a representative of the Bremen left-wing at the April 1916 Kienthal Conference, a gathering of international socialists held at Kienthal, Germany.^[1]

In 1918, Frölich founded the newspaper Die Rote Fahne (The Red Flag) in Hamburg.^[1] 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".^[1] The founding congress of the KPD elected Frölich to its governing Central Committee.^[1] He was re-elected to this position by the 1920 Congress of the KPD; 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).^[1]

Following the 1921 departure of a faction led by Paul Levi, Frölich rejoined the Central Committee of the KPD.^[1] Frölich was a delegate of the KPD to the 3rd World Congress of the Comintern, which was held in Moscow in the summer of 1921.^[1] Frölich was selected by the congress as the representative of the KPD to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI).^[1] Frölich was elected as a KPD deputy to the Reichstag, serving in that capacity from 1921 to 1924 and again in 1928.^[1] Frölich was expelled from the KPD in December 1928, ostensibly as a supporter of right-wing conciliation.^[1]

After his expulsion from the KPD, Frölich joined the Communist Party Opposition (KPD-O), and helped to establish the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAP) in 1932. Following the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933, Frölich was imprisoned, remaining in custody in Lichtenburg concentration camp until December of that year.^[1] Following his release, Frölich emigrated to France, settling in Paris in February 1934.^[1] 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.^[1]

Personal life and death

Frölich's life partner from the 1920s till his death was Rosi Wolfstein (1888-1987), a fellow communist. The two were formally married in 1948. Frölich returned to West Germany in 1950, where he spent the last years of his life. 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, Japanese, and Portuguese.^[4] A new edition of this work appeared in English in 2010, published by the Chicago-based publisher Haymarket Books.^[5]