Between 1915 and 1919 Katzenstein served as a city councillor for Berlin-Charlottenburg. He was re-elected to the council in 1919 but declined to take up his seat on the council which, in the context of the unfolding "November revolution", would have been operating in uncertain partnership with the between November 1918 and the progressive implosion of the Workers' Soviet during the summer of 1919.