Erich Wiesner (politician, 1897)

Erich Wiesner (born April 17, 1897 in Weimar , † October 16, 1968 in Schwerin ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ) and journalist . In the summer of 1945 he was the last German mayor of Szczecin .

Life

The son of a carpenter attended elementary school in Weimar and trained as a bookbinder . As a teenager, Wiesner joined the SPD in 1914 . As early as the beginning of World War I , he turned politically further to the left and left the SPD. Drafted for military service in 1917, he said he refused to fight there. He was arrested and sentenced to death by a military tribunal. Freed from prison in October 1918, he went back to Weimar, where he became a member of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council .

In 1919 Wiesner became a member of the newly founded Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In 1920 he was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Union . As a communist he was committed to fighting the Weimar Republic , went underground in 1922 and lived in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1930 with his partner Lucie Rebentisch . In Moscow in 1927 he worked in the office of the Communist Youth International .

After an amnesty he returned to Germany in 1930 and was editor of the communist newspaper Volkswacht in Stettin . He then served his party as an agitator in Western Pomerania . After the seizure of power by the Nazi Party in 1933 Wiesner worked in Szczecin illegal for the KPD. Wiesner was arrested in February 1933 and was imprisoned until the summer of 1934. In 1935 he was arrested again and imprisoned until 1939, including in the Börgermoor concentration camp . In August 1944 he was arrested again as part of the "Operation Grid", but was able to escape from the Deutsch Krone prison camp and go into hiding in Stettin until the end of the war.

Wiesner returned to Stettin towards the end of the Second World War . Before the occupation by the Red Army on April 26, 1945, the city had largely been abandoned by the population. From May 1945, however, Szczecin returned to their city. Wiesner tried to be appointed mayor of Szczecin by the Soviet occupying power. However, on May 3, 1945, the Soviet city commandant initially appointed Erich Spiegel (1919–1984) as mayor. Wiesner worked in the city administration, became 1st secretary of the Stettin branch of the KPD and then managed to become mayor on May 26, 1945.

As the mayor of Szczecin, Wiesner was faced with a catastrophic situation. The largely destroyed city was left to fend for itself, and it was not integrated into the higher-level administration. The most pressing problems were the food supply of the returning population and their protection from looting, especially by Soviet soldiers. Under Wiesner, steps were taken to normalize life. On July 5, 1945, however, the Soviet occupation forces handed the city of Szczecin over to the Polish state . Wiesner was relieved of his office and had to leave Stettin.

Wiesner was then briefly authorized representative for harvesting operations in Western Pomerania. From August to December 1945 he was Lord Mayor of Schwerin , then a full-time party functionary of the KPD and, after the forced unification of the SPD and KPD in 1946, then a full-time party functionary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). From 1949 to 1952 he was District Administrator of the Güstrow district . From 1952 to 1964 he was party secretary and editor of the Schweriner Volkszeitung , the organ of the Schwerin district leadership of the SED.

Wiesner died in Schwerin at the age of 71.

Awards

1962 Order Banner of Labor

Publications

I was called Ernst. Experiences and episodes from the history of the workers' youth movement , Berlin 1978, 1st edition 1956

literature

Willi Neuhoff: Erich Wiesner - Second post-war mayor in Stettin. In: Stettiner Bürgerbrief. No. 28, 2002, ISSN 1619-6201 , pp. 65-69.
Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-320-02044-7 , pp. 866-867.
Bernd-Rainer Barth : Wiesner, Erich . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Wiesner, Erich . In: Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania? A dictionary of persons . Edition Temmen, Bremen 1995, ISBN 3-86108-282-9 , p. 467.
↑ Steffen Kachel : A red-red special path? Social Democrats and Communists in Thuringia 1919 to 1949 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Thuringia. Small series, vol. 29). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-412-20544-7 , p. 571.

Web links

Literature about Erich Wiesner (politician, 1897) in the state bibliography MV
Works by Erich Wiesner (politician, 1897) in the state bibliography MV
Literature by and about Erich Wiesner in the catalog of the German National Library

personal data
SURNAME	Wiesner, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German politician (KPD, SED) and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH	April 17, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH	Weimar
DATE OF DEATH	October 16, 1968
Place of death	Schwerin

[WwW-1] Wiesner, Erich . In: Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania? A dictionary of persons . Edition Temmen, Bremen 1995, ISBN 3-86108-282-9 , p. 467.

[2] Steffen Kachel : A red-red special path? Social Democrats and Communists in Thuringia 1919 to 1949 (= publications of the Historical Commission for Thuringia. Small series, vol. 29). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-412-20544-7 , p. 571.