Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg was born in Reval (Estonia). He became one of the most influential Nazi intellectuals, holding several high level positions in the government and the NSDAP. In 1923, he spread anti-Semitic propaganda as senior editor of the Völkischer Beobachter, punctuated in 1930 by the publication of his “Myth of the Twentieth Century” (Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts). That same year, Rosenberg was elected to Germany’s Reichstag and shortly after Hitler’s appointment as Reich Chancellor in 1933, he headed the NSDAP’s foreign policy office (Aussenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP) with the title of Reichsleiter. In 1934, Hitler named him Beauftragter des Führers für die Überwachung der gesamten geistigen und weltanschaulichen Schulung und Erziehung der NSDAP (The Führer’s Commissioner for the Supervision of the Intellectual and Ideological Schooling and Training of the NSDAP, DBFU), the predecessor of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, (ERR) a Nazi organization solely devoted to state-sponsored cultural plunder. The ERR began its work in earnest upon the invasion of western Europe in spring 1940. By the same token, Hitler promoted Rosenberg to head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Reichsminister für die besetzten Ostgebiete), which oversaw the Reichskommissariat Ostland (RKO) and Ukraine. Rosenberg’s personal involvement with the Schloss affair was limited. His ERR appointees in Paris, Kurt von Behr and his deputy, Bruno Lohse, played an instrumental role in securing the collection. On 4 November 1943, after the Schloss Collection had been transferred to the Jeu de Paume, Rosenberg allegedly inspected it. Rosenberg played a key role in the implementation of the so-called Final Solution, the genocide of European Jewry. He was arrested in 1945 and brought before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg, where he was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. Literature: Bollmus, Reinhard. “Rosenberg, Alfred.” Neue Deutsche Biographie 22 (2005), pp. 59-61. Robert Wistrich. Who’s Who in Nazi Germany. Taylor & Francis, 2013, p. 209ff. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Alfred Rosenberg.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/alfred-rosenberg-biography. Accessed on 4 May 2021. Yad Vashem. “Alfred Rosenberg.” Shoah Resource Center. https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205835.pdf. Accessed on 5 May 2021. Grimsted, Patricia Kennedy. _Reconstructing the Record of Nazi Cultural Plunder: A Guide to the Dispersed Archives of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) and the Postwar Retrieval of ERR Loot. _See in particular: Introduction. Alfred Rosenberg and the ERR: The Records of Plunder and the Date of its Loot. Online available at: https://www.errproject.org/guide.php; https://www.errproject.org/guide/ERR_Guide_Introduction.pdf. Accessed on 5 May 2021. Matthäus, Jürgen.Bajohr, Frank. The Political Diary of Alfred Rosenberg and the Onset of the Holocaust. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015.   ##