Leopold Rosenow

Leopold Rosenow 1896

Leopold Rosenow (born October 22, 1848 in Strasburg (West Prussia), † May 10, 1930 in Berlin ) was a German entrepreneur, local politician in Berlin and left-wing liberal member of the Prussian House of Representatives .

education and profession

Rosenow came from a Jewish family. After finishing the Jewish elementary school in his hometown, he attended the secondary school in Thorn . In 1872 he came to Berlin. After initially working in the banking industry, he became a factory owner. He was the owner of a molding and frame factory. Rosenow was a member of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce.

Local politics in the empire

Between 1894 and 1920 he was a member of the Berlin city council . Rosenow was among other things chairman of the transport deputation and the deputation for welfare. He was also the general fire brigade of Berlin.

Alongside Oskar Cassel , Rosenow was the most important left-wing liberal in Berlin at the turn of the century. He advocated an active social policy in the Berlin city parliament. There he led the “new” or “socially progressive faction”, which was located to the left of the “old left” of Oskar Cassel.

Prussian House of Representatives

Rosenow was a member of the Prussian House of Representatives from 1903 to 1918. He was first a member of the Liberal People's Party and later the Progressive People's Party . In 1903 Rosenow took over the former constituency from Rudolf Virchow . After the redesign of the constituencies, which meant the end of left-liberal hegemony in Berlin, Rosenow successfully competed in a working-class district. Despite the three-class suffrage in 1913, he was only just able to assert this against Hermann Weyl , the SPD candidate .

Rosenow concentrated in parliament, as in local politics, on transport policy. He spoke frequently in plenary sessions on the trade and railroad budget. In 1905 he became deputy chairman of the House of Representatives' Trade and Industry Commission. In the Prussian parliament, too, he pleaded for the state's social policy commitment. At first he was still completely on the line of Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch but went more and more.

In addition to his commitment to active social policy, he criticized the discriminatory Poland policy under Bernhard von Bülow . He was also one of the first to demand the establishment of chairs for social medicine and newspaper studies at Prussian universities.

World War and Weimar Republic

He also stood up for the workers in the First World War .

Between 1919 and 1921 he served as an unpaid city councilor in Berlin. After that he was a paid city councilor in the district office center. Since 1926 he had the honorary title of city ​​elder . Rosenow was also the chairman of the Association for People's Kindergartens in Berlin.

Remarks

1. ↑ Bernhard Mann (edit.): Biographical manual for the Prussian House of Representatives. 1867-1918. Collaboration with Martin Doerry , Cornelia Rauh and Thomas Kühne. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1988, p. 327f. (Handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties: Vol. 3); for the election results see Thomas Kühne: Handbook of elections to the Prussian House of Representatives 1867–1918. Election results, election alliances and election candidates (= handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 6). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5182-3 , pp. 164-180.

literature

• On the history and culture of the Jews in East and West Prussia . Georg Olms Verlag, 2000 p. 477. Digitized
• Ernest Hamburger : Jews in public life in Germany: members of the government, civil servants and parliamentarians in the monarchist era. 1848-1918 . Tübingen, 1968 p. 369f. Digitized
• A. Plate: Handbook for the Prussian House of Representatives . Edition for the 20th legislative period. Berlin, 1904 p. 352