Bruno Siegel

Bruno Siegel (born September 10, 1890 in Hilbersdorf , † August 12, 1948 in Dresden ) was a German worker functionary, politician and resistance fighter .

Life

Siegel was born in 1890 as one of twelve children of simple workers near Freiberg . In addition to attending primary school, he had to help keep the family going early on: he earned money as a plumber's errand boy , with whom he also began an apprenticeship from 1904. After completing his training as a plumber, he worked in various cities in Germany. At the age of 18 he became a member of the SPD . Employment in Cuxhaven (1909) and Hamburg followed . Here he was drafted in 1911 and came to the Mediterranean Division via Kiel and Wilhelmshaven in 1912 . Although his active military service ended in 1914, he remained in the Navy due to the outbreak of World War I. He worked as a stoker on the SMS Goeben , which was able to bypass the lock of the British fleet in the Mediterranean via Messina in August 1914 . Siegel was wounded in the war and was sent to the military hospital in Wilhelmshaven in 1917. He spent the rest of the war with the airship department in Nordholz . In Hamburg he took an active part in the November Revolution .

Siegel went to Dresden with his wife in December 1918, where he was employed as a plumber by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in the Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk Dresden . In 1919 he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and at the end of 1920 he moved with the left wing of the USPD to the KPD . He was soon elected chairman of the RAW works council; Emerich Ambros was also a member of the works council at the time . Siegel also worked in the district works council and was a member of the board of the German Railway Workers' Association (DEV) / Union of Railway Workers in Germany (EdED) in the Saxony district. From 1925 Siegel was also a functionary in the Leipzig EdED local administration. As a member of the KPD district management in East Saxony, he worked as a consultant from 1924 and represented the KPD's trade union policy in the Saxon offices of the Reichsbahn. From 1928/29 he became involved in the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO). In the RGO he took on several functions. He was therefore excluded from the EdED and from 1931 to 1933 took over the function of the second chairman of the "Red Railway Union" of the RGO in Saxony.

Siegel was a member of the Saxon state parliament from 1926 to 1933 and temporarily deputy parliamentary group leader of the KPD, where he had been proposed for election by the district leadership of the KPD East Saxony. In 1928 he was a delegate at the VI under the direction of Ernst Thälmann . World Congress of the Communist International , where he met Clara Zetkin, among others .

After the seizure of power of the Nazis Siegel went in March 1933, first in the illegality, but fell seriously ill and therefore stood 1,933 police. He came over the Dresden police headquarters in the detention center Mathildenstraße . He was then placed in so-called protective custody in the Colditz concentration camp . Further stations were the Sachsenburg concentration camp and the Augustusburg labor camp . It was not until 1934 that Siegel was released seriously ill, but remained under police surveillance. In the following years he earned his living as a soap dealer and finally became a plumber at Zeiss Ikon in 1935 , where he actively worked in a resistance group.

Bruno Siegel's urn grave in the Heidefriedhof

Siegel was arrested again on September 1, 1939 and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp , but released again in early 1940. He continued his work at Zeiss Ikon and was again active in the resistance. He refused any cooperation requested by the Gestapo , whereupon he was arrested again on July 1, 1941. The Gestapo announced his arrest in a report on important state police events on July 4, 1941: “In the high treason case Stein and others, the Dresden Stapo control center arrested the plumber Bruno Siegel [...]. Siegel [...] had already been in protective custody twice for a longer period of time because of subversive activities. He is again accused of having communist word of mouth and listening to foreign stations. ”On May 21, 1942, the Dresden Higher Regional Court sentenced him to five years imprisonment for“ joint preparation for high treason ”. He was taken to the Waldheim prison, where he had to work as a plumber. At the beginning of May 1945 the Waldheim prison was liberated. Siegel was among the survivors, but he was seriously ill as a result of the mistreatment. One of his first activities in freedom was the publication of a daily newspaper for Döbeln on behalf of the Soviet commanders.

After the liberation, Siegel returned to Dresden in May 1945 and from July 1945 became involved in the formation of free unions in the railway organization. Although his health was poor, he became State Secretary for Transport in the State Administration of Saxony (LVS) in July 1945 under Rudolf Friedrichs . He had to give up this position after a short time due to his health. After a year of convalescence, he became director of the motor transport company in Dresden, but stays in hospital and sanatorium soon followed. Siegel died in Dresden in August 1948; his urn was transferred to the honor grove on the Heidefriedhof in the 1950s .

Commemoration

In the GDR, numerous sites and collectives bore his name as a name of honor . Among other things, the vocational school center Turnerstrasse in Freiberg was called from 1979 to 1991 municipal vocational school "Bruno Siegel". The sanatorium in Coswig , which is used today for residential purposes, was called “Bruno-Siegel-Heim” in GDR times. In Dresden, Liliengasse was called Bruno-Siegel-Straße from 1962 to 1991.

literature

• Bruno Siegel . In: Elsa Frölich: Striving towards the highest of humanity. Brief descriptions of the lives of Dresden worker functionaries and resistance fighters . Museum for the History of the Dresden Labor Movement, Dresden 1959, pp. 63–71.
• Siegel, Bruno . In: Museum for the History of the City of Dresden: Biographical notes on Dresdner Strasse and squares that recall personalities from the labor movement, the anti-fascist resistance struggle and the socialist rebuilding . Dresden 1976, pp. 76-77.
• Short biography for:  Siegel, Bruno . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Siegfried Mielke , Stefan Heinz : Railway trade unionists in the Nazi state. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration (1933–1945) (= trade unionists under National Socialism. Persecution - Resistance - Emigration. Volume 7). Metropol, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86331-353-1 , pp. 293, 363, 674–675 (short biography).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Occasionally, 1949 is given as the year of death on his urn grave inscription, which, however, was not made until the 1950s. 1948 however u. a. in Elsa Frölich (1959), p. 71, as well as in a short biography for:  Siegel, Bruno . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
2. ↑ "He grew up with 11 siblings." Cf. Bruno Siegel . In: Elsa Frölich: Striving towards the highest of humanity. Brief descriptions of the lives of Dresden worker functionaries and resistance fighters . Museum for the History of the Dresden Labor Movement, Dresden 1959, p. 64. Who was who in the GDR? however, names him as one of eleven siblings.
3. ↑ Bruno Siegel . In: Elsa Frölich: Striving towards the highest of humanity. Brief descriptions of the lives of Dresden worker functionaries and resistance fighters . Museum for the History of the Dresden Labor Movement, Dresden 1959, p. 65.
4. ↑ Short biography on:  Siegel, Bruno . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
5. ↑ Bruno Siegel . In: Elsa Frölich: Striving towards the highest of humanity. Brief descriptions of the lives of Dresden worker functionaries and resistance fighters . Museum for the History of the Dresden Labor Movement, Dresden 1959, p. 67.
6. ↑ Siegel, Bruno. In: Historical minutes of the Saxon state parliament. Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library , accessed on November 14, 2016 . 
7. ↑ Bruno Siegel . In: Elsa Frölich: Striving towards the highest of humanity. Brief descriptions of the lives of Dresden worker functionaries and resistance fighters . Museum for the History of the Dresden Labor Movement, Dresden 1959, p. 69.
8. ↑ Notification of important state police events . No. 2 of July 4, 1941. In: Gestapo reports on the anti-fascist resistance struggle of the KPD from 1933 to 1945. Volume 2: September 1939 to August 1943 . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1989, p. 40.
9. ↑ Bruno Siegel . In: Elsa Frölich: Striving towards the highest of humanity. Brief descriptions of the lives of Dresden worker functionaries and resistance fighters . Museum for the History of the Dresden Labor Movement, Dresden 1959, p. 63.
10. ↑ History of the BSZ to bsz-freiberg-turnerstr.de
11. ↑ Der Ameisenhübel ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at coswig.de.