Olaf Rose

Who is Olaf Rose?

Olaf Rose is a German historian and politician. He represents the National Democratic Party of Germany. Since 2006, Rose has worked as a parliamentary adviser to the group of the NPD in the Landtag of Saxony. He is a co-founder of the Gesellschaft für Freie Publizistik and a city councilor in Pirna. From 2008 to 2009, he was a member of the federal board of the NPD.

He was born in Arnsberg in North Rhine-Westphalia. A conscientious objector, he opted for the Zivildienst instead of military service. He studied German and history at the Ruhr University Bochum, and in 1992, he received a doctorate in military history from the Helmut Schmidt University of the Bundeswehr. His dissertation, which was financially supported by the Clausewitz Society, explored the influence of Carl von Clausewitz as a military theorist in Russia and the Soviet Union. As a student and young academic, he held left wing views and contributed to left wing publications. From 1987 to 1996, he worked as an archivist for the Herdecke local government, and has published works on local history.

He unsuccessfully contested the Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge constituency at the 2009 general election. On 3 March 2012, he was nominated for President of Germany in the 2012 election by the National Democratic Party of Germany, winning only three out of 1,228 votes.