Alfred Zingler

Alfred Wilhelm Hermann Zingler (born June 6, 1885 in Sprottau ; † August 28, 1944 in Brandenburg prison ) was a German journalist and politician ( SPD ) and a victim of Nazi war justice.

Life and activity

Zingler was the son of a Prussian district court secretary. After attending elementary school in Hoyerswerda , secondary school and the humanistic grammar school in Görlitz , he finished his education with the acquisition of the year-old at the agricultural school in Liegnitz . He then began training for the middle legal service, which he broke off prematurely. Instead, he devoted himself to aesthetic interests: from 1909 he worked as an actor.

In 1913, Zingler made another career change: he turned away from acting and became a journalist. He became editor-in-chief of the Breslauer Morgenzeitung newspaper . After the outbreak of the First World War - in which he did not take part because the compulsory recruitment authorities classified him as unsuitable - he worked for Wolff's Telegraphic Bureau . In 1916 he moved to Tilsit , where he took over the editing of the Tilsiter Zeitung .

Politically oriented Zingler gradually turned to the left: On February 10, 1919, he joined the SPD, in which he joined the reform-oriented, pragmatic wing. Soon afterwards he became a city councilor in Tilsit.

On April 1, 1919, Zingler took over the post of editor-in-chief of the newly founded social democratic newspaper in Tilsit, the Tilsiter Volksstimme . In May 1921 he changed to the editorial staff of the People's Guard in Regensburg . In 1923 Zingler settled in the Ruhr area: he first became an editor at the Neue Freie Presse in Hagen and then, in the same year, local editor of the social democratic daily Volkswille in Gelsenkirchen , where he lived from then on. He retained this position until the newspaper was banned on February 27, 1933. In the Gelsenkirchen SPD, Zingler finally belonged to the local executive committee and the board of the local section of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold .

After the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Zingler decided to emigrate : In May 1933 he moved to the Netherlands . With the help of the Dutch Social Democrats, he found refuge in Hengelo , from where he acted as editor of the Free Press , a social democratically oriented exile newspaper, against the regime that was establishing itself in Germany: He supplied the newspapers Free Germany (Amsterdam), Freie Presse (Amsterdam) and Der Neue Vorwärts (Prague) with anti-National Socialist articles. In addition, he helped smuggle in the socialist action , a social democratic resistance paper, and other propaganda publications directed against the ruling regime into the German state, where they were mainly distributed in the Ruhr area. Conversely, he received information from the returning couriers, which he distributed within networks of emigrants in the Netherlands and Europe to promote their political work.

Meanwhile, Zingler was viewed as an enemy of the state by the police organs of the ruling system in Germany. Since he was mistakenly suspected to be in Great Britain, he was also placed on the special wanted list by the Reich Main Security Office at the beginning of 1940 , a list of people who would be given special priority by the occupying troops in the event of a successful occupation and invasion of the British island by the occupying forces should be located and arrested.

In the wake of the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, Zingler went underground. For several years he lived unrecognized in the village of Almen. On July 2, 1943, Zingler was finally tracked down by the German occupation authorities in the Netherlands and taken to Arnhem prison. Together with his wife he was first taken to the Herzogenbusch concentration camp and the Amersfoort transit camp , from where they were transferred to the Gelsenkirchen prison in January 1944. Alfred Zingler was eventually brought to Berlin. On June 30, 1944 he was finally - despite the fact that he no longer had German citizenship and therefore technically could not be guilty of this offense as a non-German citizen - because of the allegations, preparation for high treason and degradation of military strength against the Having committed German Reich , indicted before the 1st Senate of the People's Court . Specifically, he was accused of having incited articles against the German Reich and the people in the years 1933 to 1940, of having participated in the organization of anti-Nazi courier trips to the Reich and the dissemination of social democratic propaganda against the Nazi system, and by making statements during his imprisonment, during which he doubted the chances of a victorious outcome of the war for the German side, “having served our war enemies as their propaganda servant”. For example, he had explained to fellow prisoners that a German war victory would mean slavery for Europe, encouraged a fellow prisoner whose son had defected to the Red Army that the son would return because the humanitarian idea would ultimately win, and he declared that one in Holland generally hoped for a victory for the British and the Americans, by invading the continent and liberating the small peoples. In the hearing on July 17, 1944, chaired by Roland Freisler (assessors: Schlemann, Daniel Hauer , Hangold, Winter) he was found guilty and sentenced to death .

Zingler's execution was finally carried out on August 28, 1944 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison.

Today in Gelsenkirchen, the Alfred-Zingler-Strasse named after Zingler and the Alfred-Zingler-Haus remind of his life and his commitment in the city.

family

On September 26, 1914, Zingler married the accountant Margarethe Wiesner (1895–1973). Like him, she was involved in the 1920s and 1930s and again after the end of the war in the Social Democratic Party and in charitable organizations in Gelsenkirchen.

literature

• J. Th. M. Houwink ten Cate / Horst Lademacher: National Socialist rule and occupation: historical experience and processing from a Dutch and German perspective. Waxmann, Münster / New York / Munich / Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89325-899-X , pp. 62–65.

Web links

• Working group of the NRW memorials: Short biography of Alfred and Margarethe Zingler
• Zingler was sentenced to death on July 17, 1944

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Hepp / Hans Georg Lehmann: The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger , 1985, p. 21.