Erich Zeigner

Zeigner at a peace rally in 1948

Zeigner's tombstone in the Leipzig South Cemetery

Erich Richard Moritz Zeigner (born  February 17, 1886 in Erfurt , † April 5, 1949 in Leipzig ) was a lawyer and politician of the SPD and, after the Second World War, the SED . In 1923 he ruled the Free State of Saxony as Prime Minister for a few months . In 1945 the Soviet occupying power appointed him Lord Mayor of Leipzig.

Life

In 1894 Zeigner moved with his parents from Erfurt to Leipzig. From 1896 to 1905 he attended the Petri-Realgymnasium there . From 1905 to 1913 he studied at the University of Leipzig Law and Economics and received his doctorate there 1,913th

After completing his studies, Zeigner was an assessor at the Leipzig Public Prosecutor's Office. In 1918 he became a public prosecutor . After joining the SPD in 1919, he was dismissed as a public prosecutor and transferred to the Leipzig Regional Court as a judge.

In August 1921 Zeigner became Saxon Minister of Justice in the government of Prime Minister Wilhelm Buck . On March 21, 1923 he was elected third Prime Minister of the Free State of Saxony . After he accepted two members of the KPD into his government on October 10, 1923 (see Zeigner's cabinet ), he was deposed as Prime Minister on October 29, 1923 by Reich President Friedrich Ebert (SPD) using the Reich execution . On November 21, 1923 Zeigner was arrested in the spring of 1924 because of " corruption convicted and acts of embezzlement in office" to three years in prison, from which it in August 1925 on probation was dismissed.

From 1925 to 1928 Zeigner was a teacher at the federal school of the Workers' Gymnastics and Sports Association in Leipzig. From 1928 to 1933 he worked as a journalist for various Saxon party newspapers and was head of a legal information office for the SPD in Leipzig. In 1932 he was one of the signatories of the urgent appeal to merge the SPD and KPD in the election campaign for the Reichstag election in July .

After the National Socialists took power, Zeigner was arrested in August 1933 for illegal anti-fascist work, but acquitted in the process in 1935. Since then he has had to make a living from odd jobs. Imprisoned again for a short time in 1939, he then worked as an accountant in Leipzig. After the failed Hitler assassination attempt on July 20, 1944, Zeigner was deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp along with Stanislaw Trabalski , Heinrich Fleißner and other Leipzig Social Democrats . In August 1944 he was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp .

Zeigner returned to Leipzig in 1945, was legal advisor to the city administration in Leipzig in June / July 1945 and was appointed Lord Mayor of Leipzig on July 16, 1945 by Lieutenant General Nikolai Ivanovich Trufanow , the commander of the Soviet military administration in Leipzig . He held this office until his death. In October 1946 he was confirmed by an election.

In 1945/1946 Zeigner was a member of the expanded SPD district committee in Leipzig. In April 1946 he was one of the co-founders of the SED in Leipzig and Saxony at the unification congress of the KPD and SPD and was a member of the SED program commission. Between 1946 and 1949 he was a member of the SED in the Saxon state parliament . In 1948/1949 he was a member of the German People's Council .

In May 1947 Zeigner was appointed honorary professor for administrative studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Leipzig. He also became head of the Institute for Communal Sciences, which he had initiated. In October 1948 he was appointed full professor for administration. In 1949 he died of a serious illness at the age of 63.

Commemoration

Erich Zeigner's final resting place is in the Leipzig South Cemetery (Section XI); An important connecting road in the Leipzig district of Plagwitz (Erich-Zeigner-Allee) was named after him. An association maintains a small museum in Zeigner's house in Leipzig and, in the spirit of the former mayor, is committed to political education against right-wing extremism. His image in stone is also on the grounds of Conne Island Leipzig.

literature

• Karsten Rudolph : Zeigner, Erich (Richard Moritz). In: Manfred Asendorf and Rolf von Bockel (eds.): Democratic ways. German résumés from five centuries. Publishing house JB Metzler, Stuttgart; Weimar 1997, pp. 704-706 ISBN 3-476-01244-1 .
• Michael Rudloff (Ed.): Erich Zeigner. Educated citizen and social democrat. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Leipzig office, Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-86077-449-2 .
• Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Zeigner, Erich . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Mike Schmeitzner : Heinrich Fleißner (1888-1959). Social democratic continuity from the German Empire to the GDR. In: Michael Rudloff, Mike Schmeitzner (eds.): “Such pests also exist in Leipzig”. Social Democrats and the SED. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-631-47385-0 , p. 76 f.
• Mike Schmeitzner: Erich Zeigner. The Left Socialist and the United Front (1923). In: Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Wagner (ed.): Of power and powerlessness. Saxon Prime Minister in the Age of Extremes 1919–1952. Sax-Verlag, Beucha 2006, ISBN 978-3-934544-75-8 , pp. 125-158.
• Hartmut Felsberg :  Zeigner, Erich Richard Moritz. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 37, Bautz, Nordhausen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95948-142-7 , Sp. 1515-1530.

Web links

Commons : Erich Zeigner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Erich Zeigner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Erich Zeigner in the Saxon Bibliography
• Newspaper article about Erich Zeigner in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Biography of Erich Zeigner . In: Wilhelm H. Schröder : Social Democratic Parliamentarians in the German Reich and Landtag 1876–1933 (BIOSOP)
• Erich Zeigner in the professorial catalog of the University of Leipzig
• Erich-Zeigner-Haus eV