Rolf Hosfeld

Rolf Hosfeld

born in 1948 in Bad Berleburg. He was a free lanced writer and historian as well as the Academic Director of the Potsdam Lepsius House, an institute in Genocide Research. He studied German language and literature, political science, history and philosophy in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin, and subsequently earned a doctorate on Heinrich Heine. Hosfeld worked as an editor for several magazines and weeklies, including Merian, Der Feinschmecker and Die Woche, and as a film and television producer. In this capacity, he produced about 50 films, 15 directed by himself, including a four-part series on fascism as a pan-European phenomenon and a three-part series on civil wars in Eastern and Southern Europe after 1945. He also published numerous journalistic and scientific articles, radio broadcasts and books on historical, cultural and contemporary topics. His biography of Karl Marx »Die Geister, die er rief« (En. »Karl Marx. An Intellectual Biography«, 2013) has been awarded with the prize »The Political Book« by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 2010. In 2016, he received the Jubilee Gold Medal of the Yerevan State University. Together with Sönke Neitzel and Julius H. Schoeps, he edited the book series Gewaltpolitik und Menschenrechte published by Duncker & Humblot, Berlin. Hosfeld has been member of the Verband deutscher Schrifsteller (VS, the German Writers’ Union) since 1982 and has served on the Board of Directors of the Peter Weiss Foundation for Art and Politics since 2002. Rolf Hosfeld died in Potsdam on July 23, 2021