Adolf Rosner was born in Berlin into a family of Polish emigrants. The boy had five brothers and sisters. The name given to him at birth, for obvious reasons, was later transformed into Adi, Oddi, later – Eddie.

At the age of four, he played the violin so confidently that he was accepted into the private Julius Stern Conservatory in Berlin. At the age of 10, Rosner graduated with an ‘A’ rating, after which he entered the Berlin Higher School of Music.  On the advice of his uncle, Adolf Rosner decided to learn to play the trumpet, and in a couple of years the young musician performed solos on this instrument, making jazz connoisseurs swoon in admiration. At the same time, Rosner invented his famous trick with two trumpets, which he played at simultaneously.

In 1928, the eighteen-year-old youth became a trumpet soloist with the dance orchestra of Marek Weber in Hamburg. He then joined the popular jazz band ‘Vaintraub Cynkopaitors’, which performed, among other things, on ocean liner serving the Hamburg-New York passenger line. In 1934, Rosner met his idol Louis Armstrong. The famous trumpeter, admiring the skills of his European colleague, gave Rosner a photo card on which he inscribed: ‘To white Louis Armstrong’. It is said that Eddie was not confused and in response presented his photo with the inscription – ‘To black Eddie Rosner’. At that time, he was a typical bohemian character of Berlin during the Weimar Republic.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, the musician left the country. In the mid-1930s, in Poland, Rosner assembled his own jazz orchestra, with which he toured France, Latvia and other European countries. In Paris, the famous firm Columbia made recordings of four of his orchestra's hits. Eddie Rosner is recognized as one of the best, if not the best trumpeter in Europe.

In 1939, Hitler attacked Poland. Rosner was forced to flee and ended up in the Soviet Belarus. In 1940, the State Jazz Orchestra of the BSSR with Rosner heading it was formed from the recent Polish musicians of extra-class by order from the head of the republic, Panteleimon Ponomarenko. The band's base was Minsk, but the orchestra toured all over the USSR. In Sochi, the orchestra even gave a personal concert for Joseph Stalin, who was on holiday there. Big Band of Eddie Rosner was one of the first Soviet jazz orchestras to perform swing music and played one of the key roles in the development of this musical direction by Russian musicians. The ever-elegant, charismatic Rosner was called ‘the czar of the Soviet swing’.

During the Great Patriotic War the orchestra performed a lot for the soldiers of the Soviet army, among the personal awards of Rosner was the medal ‘For the Liberation of Warsaw’, in 1944, he received the title of Honored Artist of the Belarusian USSR. After the victory Eddie Rosner with the jazz orchestra of the BSSR gave concerts ‘Here we are celebrating’ in Moscow and Leningrad. People could not get tickets for them – so phenomenal was the success.

Having become a Soviet stage star, Rosner performed successfully until 1946. Then the country began to persecute jazz. The newspapers were full of epithets addressed to Rosner: ‘fawning servility’, ‘third-rate cabaret trumpeter’.... His career was soon interrupted by his arrest and eight-year imprisonment in Gulag prisons and camps. Rosner was charged with ‘treason by fleeing or travelling abroad’. In the Gulag, the musician continued to work in his profession, organizing a pop orchestra made up of prisoners.

Having returned from Kolyma only in 1954, Eddie was full of plans and soon began to assemble a new band. He was given funding and a base for rehearsals. So began another new page of life for Eddie Rosner, a popular Soviet showman, head of the variety orchestra created under MosEstrada. In 1956, Rosner and his orchestra starred in the film comedy ‘Carnival Night’ And the musicians themselves can also be seen in the film – they are sitting on the dial of a giant alarm clock, in front of which Lyudmila Gurchenko performs her famous song ‘Five Minutes’.   For many years, the Orchestra of Rosner was one of the leading orchestras in the Soviet Union.

The group constantly toured the cities of the Union with colorful performances that included a universal palette of works ranging from music for recreation to ‘songs of the peoples of the world’.

In 1971, Rosner was insultingly, almost forcibly forced to retire and the orchestra was disbanded. The maestro tried to start again, formed an ensemble under the Gomel the Philharmonic Organization, but it was clear that his time was gone. Angry and tired, he left for Germany in January 1973. In early 1976, Rosner died in West Berlin – a solitary emigrant, living out his life on a meagre pension. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district.

The musician was married three times; he is the father of three daughters and a son.

Documentary about Eddie Rosner by Pierre-Henri Salfaty “Le Jazzman Du Goulag” (The Jazzman from the Gulag, 1999), won an Emmy Award in the Documentary Feature Film category.

Ref.:
https://www.belarus.kp.ru/daily/27496/4755749/
https://minsknews.by/vsem-stanovitsya-yasno-rastet-vunderkind-kto-takoj-eddi-rozner-i-zachem-pro-nego-snimat-film-v-belarusi/
https://dzen.ru/a/YRozfR2fiGTmbfOL

https://regnum.ru/article/3602942

https://ru.ruwiki.ru/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%BE%D0%B7%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%80,_%D0%AD%D0%B4%D0%B4%D0%B8
https://bessmertnybarak.ru/article/maestro_eddi_rozner/
https://www.slovoart.ru/node/1364