Erich Ziemer

Erich Ziemer (born October 18, 1906 in Berlin , † October 1937 in Aragon ) was a German communist . Together with Erich Mielke , he committed the murder of the police on August 9, 1931 on Bülowplatz .

Life

Ziemer was a bridge-building technician by profession and had been a member of the party self-protection of the KPD in the Berlin sub-district north ( Berlin-Wedding / Reinickendorf ) since August 1929 . He was trained in various weapons, carried out guard and protective tasks at demonstrations and in the party headquarters, the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus , and at the end of 1930 took over the leadership of a normal group (5 men).

Murders on Bülowplatz

In Berlin, the political struggle had intensified in the run-up to the referendum on August 9, 1931, to dissolve the Prussian state parliament, which was supported by the KPD . After a worker was shot dead by the police during the repeated evacuation of Bülowplatz in the immediate vicinity of the KPD party headquarters, according to later statements by those involved in the crime, Hans Kippenberger , a member of the Reichstag, with the help of Heinz Neumann , advised Michael, the head of the party self-protection in Berlin-Wedding Klause , the plan to shoot the captain of the police , Paul Anlauf. Klause found Erich Mielke and Erich Ziemer, two volunteers as shooters, on Kippenberger's behalf. On the evening of August 9, 1931 around 7:00 p.m., Mielke and Ziemer met the police officers Anlauf, Richard Willig and Franz Lenck in Weydingerstraße, which runs towards the Babylon cinema . They followed the police officers and fired from behind at close range at their victims. Anlauf was killed immediately, Lenck dragged himself into the entrance of the cinema; Willig survived with a shot in the stomach.

Escape to Moscow

Wanted poster of the Berlin police from September 1933. Erich Ziemer is shown in the top row, second from the right

In August 1931 Mielke and Ziemer fled via Rostock to Leningrad and finally to Moscow . They may have received help to escape from Thea Kippenberger and Georg Thiele as well as Albert Gromulat . In Moscow, the two were initially housed as alleged "farmers" in the emigrant home of the Red Aid . Ziemer was listed as number 32 on the list of emigrants at the Politburo of the KPD in Moscow, d. In other words, he was a political emigrant legitimized by the party. Like Mielke, he attended a course at the Military Political School near Moscow from January to July 1932 . Armed foreign tactics, explosives, weapons and communications technology as well as military tactics were taught there, as well as dialectical and historical materialism , political economy and the history of the labor movement . Ziemer had the code name Georg Schmidt .

Under the name Georg Schlosser , Ziemer attended courses at the International Lenin School in 1932/33 . There selected writings by Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels , Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Josef Stalin were studied and lectures by selected speakers were heard. In 1934/35 Ziemer also took part in a Comintern course with Mielke . In 1935/36 the two aspirants were at the prorector of the Lenin School. 1936 Ziemer went as Georg Schlosser to Spain in order on the part of the Republic of the Civil War participate. He became political commissar in a tank regiment and died in Aragon on the Ebro front in October 1937 . He was posthumously named " Hero of the Soviet Union ".

Götz Aly characterizes Ziemer as "deeply insecure people". The Communist Party stabilized it and then functionalized it. Ziemer was looking for political identity and found it in the assassination.

literature

• Götz Aly: The Trial of the Century. Erich Mielke and the "Bülowplatz thing". In: Ders .: Power - Spirit - Delusion. Continuities of German Thought. Argon, Berlin 1997, pp. 9-35.
• Jochen von Lang : Erich Mielke. A German career. Rowohlt TB, Reinbek 1993.
• Wilfriede Otto : Erich Mielke - biography. The rise and fall of a chekist. Dietz, Berlin 2000.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Götz Aly: The process of the century. Erich Mielke and the "Bülowplatz thing". In: Ders .: Power - Spirit - Delusion. Continuities of German Thought. Argon, Berlin 1997, pp. 30, 24.
2. ^ Jochen von Lang: Erich Mielke. A German career. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, pp. 19-26, 219. See Wilfriede Otto: Erich Mielke - Biographie. The rise and fall of a chekist. Dietz, Berlin 2000, pp. 23-25.
3. ↑ Wilfriede Otto: Erich Mielke - biography. The rise and fall of a chekist. Dietz, Berlin 2000, p. 29f.
4. ↑ Wilfriede Otto: Erich Mielke - biography. The rise and fall of a chekist. Dietz, Berlin 2000, p. 32 f.
5. ↑ Wilfriede Otto: Erich Mielke - biography. The rise and fall of a chekist. Dietz, Berlin 2000, p. 513.
6. ↑ Wilfriede Otto: Erich Mielke - biography. The rise and fall of a chekist. Dietz, Berlin 2000, p. 35 f.
7. ↑ Wilfriede Otto: Erich Mielke - biography. The rise and fall of a chekist. Dietz, Berlin 2000, p. 65; Götz Aly: The Trial of the Century. Erich Mielke and the "Bülowplatz thing". In: Ders .: Power - Spirit - Delusion. Continuities of German Thought. Argon, Berlin 1997, p. 34.
8. ↑ Götz Aly: The process of the century. Erich Mielke and the "Bülowplatz thing". In: Ders .: Power - Spirit - Delusion. Continuities of German Thought. Argon, Berlin 1997, p. 34 f.
9. ↑ Götz Aly: The process of the century. Erich Mielke and the "Bülowplatz thing". In: Ders .: Power - Spirit - Delusion. Continuities of German Thought. Argon, Berlin 1997, p. 32.