Cambridge mayor pays tribute to long-serving city councillor Colin Rosenstiel, who has died at 68

Published: 11:51, 09 May 2018

| Updated: 13:28, 06 December 2018

Guildhall Cambridge local election count, Liberal Democrat councillor Colin Rosenstiel. Picture: Keith Heppell . Picture: Keith Heppell

Tributes have flooded in on Twitter.

Our thoughts are with Joye and Colin's family, and with Colin's friends too,
We will miss you Colin, as will all those who shared your many passions, including for psephology - from all of Colin's Cambridge Labour friends.
— Lewis Herbert (@lewis_herbert) May 8, 2018

Tributes have been paid to a “mentor” of many Cambridge councillors, Colin Rosenstiel, who passed away yesterday (May 8) following a long battle with lymphoma.

Mr Rosenstiel was a Trinity College alumnus, and a long-serving city councillor, first elected to Market Ward for the Liberal Party in 1973.

He was 68 years old.

Cambridge mayor Cllr George Pippas, a fellow Liberal Democrat, said: “He is a great mentor to all the young councillors. It’s a huge loss for our party.

Remember 6 million Jewish Holocaust victims all had names. I remember Paul, Jenny, Wally Rosenstiel, recorded victims + Minna, father's aunts & uncle, Karla, his cousin, and Richard, Katharina, Max Meumann, mother's parents and uncle, and Laura Jacoby, her grandmother @HMD_UK
— Colin Rosenstiel (@CRRosenstiel) January 27, 2018

“His daughter and my son went to the same school at St John’s. On a personal note he and his wife were always very supportive of me as a young councillor. He was a mentor and he welcomed me onboard.

“I worked with him in licensing and I admired his knowledge of all the licensing laws and the Cambridge constitution. He knew it by heart, every page and every paragraph.

“He was tireless. I spoke to him last Thursday, he was sitting in his wheelchair by the Market ward count, he looked very pale, very ill, and he stayed to the end because he loved his ward, and I’m glad that he was there to see the Liberal Democrats regaining his old ward back. Even though he knew he had days to live, he was sitting there at two o’clock in the morning with his pen and paper. He was a truly passionate person.

“He was also controversial, but he stuck to his decisions and things that happen in Cambridge today have happened because he stood up and he was not afraid to speak his mind.

“He was a great political figure and it’s a great loss for all of us.”

Mr Rosenstiel was a keen historian, collating years of local electoral data on his website, www.cambridgeelections.org.uk. It was he who proposed the name for Queen Edith’s ward.

He was the son of Jewish refugees from Berlin, who lost many family members in the Holocaust and was a great supporter of the Holocaust Memorial Movement.

He was made an honorary city councillor in February, marking his years as a Liberal Democrat councillor between 1973 to 1988 and 1992 to 2014, joining his wife, Joye Rosenstiel, a former city mayor, who received the honour for 26 years of service between 1982 to 2008, and mayor in 1994-95.

Cambridge Politics Ben Comber