Rosenberg was born in
Fraustadt,
Province of Posen,
German Empire (today
Wschowa, Poland) to Michael Rosenberg, a cigar manufacturer, and Emma née Lichtenstein. Rosenberg passed his
Abitur in Fraustadt aged 17 after skipping one grade, he studied law at the
University of Freiburg, the
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) and the
University of Breslau (Wroclaw, Poland). He passed his first legal exam in 1899 and received his doctorate in 1900: his dissertation concerned
the burden of proof in civil law (
"Die Beweislast nach der Civilprozeßordnung und dem Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuch"). The work was subsequently reprinted in five editions and strongly influenced the modern German Civil procedure law. Rosenberg served his
Referendary in
Posen (Poznań) and passed his second legal exam in 1904, he habilitated in
Göttingen in 1906. In 1912 Rosenberg became an extraordinary professor at the
University of Giessen (ordinary professor in 1916) and rector of the university in 1927/28. In 1932 Rosenberg moved to the
University of Leipzig, but was dismissed in 1934 according to the
Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service for being Jewish. He managed to work for a lawyer at the
Reichsgericht in
Leipzig for another two years. As a regular visitor to the Rosenberg home in Leipzig,
Helmut Roloff, then a young law student, recalls Rosenberg's seeming stoicism in face of intensifying Nazi harassment. The experienced helped persuade Roloff to abandon law for a career in music where he might be less directly implicated in the crimes of the regime, and later to join the
Schulze-Boyson/Harnack (
Rote Kapelle) resistance group. The Rosenberg's took refuge in
Stiefenhofen,
Allgäu were they eked out a precarious existence during the war years. Rehabilitated at war's end, Rosenberg was appointed to a chair for civil law and civil procedural law at the
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) in 1946, teaching until his retirement in 1956. He played an important role, including as dean, in rebuilding the law school. Rosenberg died in Munich on 18 December 1963. ==Family==