Ernst Zöllner

Ernst Zöllner (born October 6, 1902 in Halle an der Saale , † January 27, 1967 in Berlin ) was a German KPD and FDGB functionary.

Life

Zöllner, son of a working-class family, attended elementary and advanced training school and completed an apprenticeship as a model maker. He then worked in this profession. In 1918 he joined the German Woodworkers Association , in 1919 the Communist Youth of Germany and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). From 1925 to 1927 Zöllner acted as the second chairman of the KPD local group in Prenzlau . From 1927 to 1932 he was an employee of the trade union department and also a member of the KPD district leadership in Halle-Merseburg. In 1930 he was a delegate to the 5th World Congress of the Red Trade Union International in Moscow . In October 1932 he fled to the Soviet Union. In Moscow he studied at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West (KUNMS) until 1936 , then he worked in the “Stalin” car factory , then again as a model maker.

From October 1936 to February 1939 he was a member of the International Brigades in Spain and there political commissar of the 11th and 13th International Brigade. In February 1939 he went to France and from March 1939 did illegal work in Belgium . He was arrested in Antwerp in September 1939 . In October 1940 he was transferred to the internment camp in Djelfa (Algeria). In the spring of 1943 he was liberated by Anglo-American troops and, by decision of the party, joined a British pioneer company. At the end of 1943 Zöllner came back to the Soviet Union with a group of German communists, where he worked as a teacher at Institute 99 (= party school of the KPD) and at POW Schools No. 165 and 27.

In August 1946 Zöllner returned to Germany. He became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and an employee of the federal board of the Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB). From 1947 to 1950 Zöllner was a member of the executive FDGB federal board and its secretariat. Zöllner headed the main economic policy department of the FDGB federal board. From October 1950 to 1952 he worked as cultural director of the general management of the Deutsche Reichsbahn . After a distance learning at the party college "Karl Marx" he was from 1952 to 1956 main plan area manager of the state planning commission . From 1956 to 1958 Zöllner acted as head of the central management department in the Ministry for Post and Telecommunications of the GDR .

Awards

• Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver (May 6, 1955)
• Order " Banner of Labor " (1962)

literature

• Customs officer, Ernst . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
• Andreas Herbst: Customs officer, Ernst . In: Dieter Dowe, Karlheinz Kuba, Manfred Wilke (Hrsg.): FDGB-Lexikon. Function, structure, cadre and development of a mass organization of the SED (1945–1990) . Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86872-240-6 .