Robert Siewert

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Robert Siewert (1968)

Robert Siewert (born December 30, 1887 in Schwersenz / Posen ; † November 2, 1973 in East Berlin ) was a German politician and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Youth, War and the Early Weimar Period

Siewert was the son of a carpenter and became a bricklayer. After his apprenticeship he went on a hike and in 1906 became a member of the SPD . From 1908 to 1915 he worked as a bricklayer in Switzerland, where he met Lenin and Heinrich Brandler . In the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament manual, he states that he was arrested for political activities in Switzerland. In 1913/1914 he worked as the local secretary of the Swiss Construction Workers' Association in Bern.

During the First World War Siewert was a soldier on the Eastern Front , where he worked illegally for the Spartakusbund . In 1918 he was a member of the soldiers' council of the X Army and then became a member of the KPD .

In 1919 Siewert Polleiter was in the Erzgebirge-Vogtland district , in 1919 and 1920 party congress delegate and finally secretary at the unification congress with the USPD. In 1920 he was elected to the Saxon state parliament, to which he was a member until 1929. At the KPD party congresses in 1921 and 1923 he was elected to the central committee. In 1922 he was a delegate at the 4th World Congress of the Communist International (KI). In 1922 he joined the party publishing house. In 1923 he became a Polleiter in Chemnitz.

Its political location can be settled between the " Brandlerists " and the "Mittelgruppe /  Compromisers ". As early as 1924 he was relieved of his party functions and sent to Berlin, where he was initially only allowed to perform insignificant functions. Together with Hans Beck , he organized the workers' delegation to the Soviet Union from 1926 . He later worked as the editor of the unit , a magazine aimed at left-wing social democrats.

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The following sections

Against the Stalinization of the KPD

Memorial plaque for Siewert on a house in Römerweg near Treskowallee

Because he represented the position of the “Brandlerists” in his party activities, he was relieved of his functions at the end of 1928 in the course of the “ Stalinization ” of the KPD and expelled from the KPD on January 14, 1929.

Robert Siewert became an active functionary of the Communist Party opposition KPO and member of the district leadership of West Saxony and kept his state parliament mandate as a member of a five-member KPO faction in the Saxon state parliament. From 1931 to 1933 he worked as the publishing director of the daily Arbeiterpolitik, first in Leipzig, then in Berlin.

From 1933 until his arrest he was part of the first illegal Reich leadership of the KPD (O) together with Erich Hausen and Fritz Wiest . Siewert, who lives in Berlin-Weißensee, Schönstrasse 32, was taken into custody at the end of March 1935.

Resistance to National Socialism

The National Socialists sentenced him to three years in prison by the People's Court on charges of “preparing for high treason ” and was imprisoned in Luckau from 1935 onwards . In September 1938 he was taken into protective custody and transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp . There Siewert again approached the KPD politically. He took a leading position in the camp's illegal unit organization, which consisted of communists and socialists; Siewert often campaigned for Jewish fellow prisoners and children held in the camp and organized a mason training course for Polish and Jewish youth. From 1938 to 1944, Siewert was a Kapo with the Building Command I in Buchenwald .

After giving a speech at an illegal memorial service organized by Willi Bleicher for Ernst Thälmann, who had just been murdered, at the end of August 1944 , he was subjected to additional reprisals from the SS. The liberation of the camp by the 3rd US Army in April 1945 saved him from threatened execution.

Political activity in the Soviet Zone

After his liberation from the concentration camp, Siewert rejoined the KPD and settled in Halle (Saale) . He became 1st Vice President of the Provincial Administration of Saxony-Anhalt. From 1945 to 1950 he was Minister of the Interior of Saxony-Anhalt. In 1945/46 he was a member of the KPD district leadership and the SED state executive and from 1949 of the "small secretariat" of the SED state leadership. In the state election in the province of Saxony in 1946 , he was elected to the state parliament of the province of Saxony. On April 17, 1947, he resigned. Adam Wolfram became a successor in the state parliament . As part of the Stalinist party purges, Siewert was relieved of all his offices in 1950 due to his KPO past - and demoted to head of Department II (General Construction) in the Ministry of Construction. His "self-critical" article, in which he acknowledged the "anti-party role" of the KPO, appeared in New Germany on January 25, 1951 , but was described by the Central Committee as insufficient. The Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK) attached importance to the statement that the KPO had not become an agency of finance capital, but had been from the start. Since Siewert's self-criticism was felt to be insufficient, Siewert lost all political influence.

Rehabilitation

In the course of the de-Stalinization , Siewert was rehabilitated and awarded several medals. In 1958, Gerhard Kosel proposed Comrade Siewert as a cadre manager in the Ministry of Construction in order to have a reliable comrade in this important position. This change was rejected, again because of his previous membership in the KPO. Siewert remained head of department in the building ministry until 1967 and in old age in the presidium of the committee of anti-fascist resistance fighters .

tomb

Siewert died on 2 November 1973 and was in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the Memorial of the Socialists in the Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried. In an official obituary by the SED , he was described as "Ernst Thalmann's closest comrade in arms".

Honors

In Berlin-Karlshorst , in the Fritz-Heckert area of Chemnitz and in Weimar , streets are named after Robert Siewert. Up until German reunification, schools in Beutha in Saxony and Dahme / Mark in Brandenburg bore his name. In 1976 a road construction regiment of the National People's Army based in Neuseddin was named after him.

literature

Web links

Commons : Robert Siewert  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ August Vuattolo: The history of masons and henchmen , stone and brick workers, construction workers (until 1920/21) , Zurich 1955 [History of the Swiss Construction and Woodworkers Association, Vol. 2], p. 56.
  2. ^ Josef Matzerath: Aspects of Saxon State Parliament History. The members and electoral districts of the Saxon state parliaments (1833–1952). Part II: 1919–1952 Saxon State Parliament, Dresden 2011, p. 40.
  3. ↑ cf. Jeremy Dronfield: The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz UK, 2019, ISBN 978-024135919-8 .
  4. ^ Primary school by Beutha: History of the primary school by Beutha . Retrieved December 11, 2017.
  5. ^ Primary school Dahme / Mark: Chronicle of the school . Retrieved April 2, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Siewert, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politicians and resistance fighters against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwersenz , Posen
DATE OF DEATH 2nd November 1973
Place of death East Berlin