SOURCE: A preface to Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Work, translated by Johanna Hoornweg, Monthly Review Press, 1972, pp. xiii-xx.

In the following essay, Frolich explains how and why he collected material for his survey of Luxemburg's life and work.

The first edition of [Rosa Luxemburg: Her Life and Work] was published in Paris at the end of August 1939, a few days before the outbreak of the Second World War. The book is a child of the German Emigration and bears the marks of its origins. The author left Germany at the beginning of 1934 after his release from a concentration camp. At the time he thought that the material which he had been gathering for many years to prepare for the Collected Works (Gesammelte Werke) of Ross Luxemburg was in safe hands. Somehow, however, it got lost or fell into hands which would not let go of it. Among...