Hans Riesner

Hans Riesner (born Johann or Johannes Riesner ; born April 22, 1902 in Schneeberg ; † May 19, 1976 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ). In 1951/1952 he was Minister for Culture and National Education in Saxony .

Life

Riesner, son of a family of craftsmen, attended the teachers' seminar in Schneeberg after elementary and advanced school. In 1922 he became an assistant teacher in Breitenbrunn . In 1923 he joined the KPD. In 1930 he was a member of the first German teachers' delegation to visit the Soviet Union . From 1933 he joined the resistance against National Socialism and was taken into “ protective custody ”, which he spent in the Colditz and Sachsenburg concentration camps . Dismissed in 1934, he worked from 1937 as a laborer in a textile factory in Rodewisch .

After the end of the war he became city councilor, first mayor and deputy mayor in Chemnitz in 1945 . In 1950/51 he was the main department head in the Saxon Ministry for National Education, in 1951/52 he held the office of Minister for Culture and National Education in the State of Saxony. From 1952 to 1957 he was first secretary of the SED district leadership in Dresden and a member of the district assembly there. In 1955 he was part of a delegation that brought treasures from the Dresden Old Masters Picture Gallery home from Moscow . From 1957 he was deputy head or head of the Department of Popular Education and Culture at the Central Committee of the SED . He later became head of department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, counselor in Warsaw and head of the political department of the GDR trade agency in Finland . In 1963 he was appointed professor and prorector at the German Academy for Political Science and Law in Potsdam (until 1965). From 1967 until his death he was a member of the SED district leadership in Karl-Marx-Stadt . He died while attending the IX. Party conference of the SED in Berlin.

Awards and honors

• Honorary Senator of the Dresden University of Technology (1953)
• Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander Medal in Gold (1954)
• Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver (1956)
• Labor Banner (1962)

On January 22nd, 1976 Riesner was made an honorary citizen of Karl-Marx-Stadt. From 1977 to 1992 a Chemnitz school in Reichenhain , where Riesner worked as a teacher before the Second World War , bore his name. After this school was destroyed by a bomb attack on March 5, 1945, Riesner, as the Chemnitz City School Councilor, campaigned for its reconstruction, so that this school was rebuilt in 1950 as the first Chemnitz school. In Chemnitz the Johann-Riesner-Straße was named after him, but since the fall of the Wall it has been called Augsburger Straße again.

literature

• Andreas Herbst , Winfried Ranke, Jürgen Winkler: This is how the GDR worked . Volume 3: Lexicon of Functionaries . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1994.
• Gabriele Baumgartner, Dieter Hebig (Hrsg.): Biographisches Handbuch der SBZ / DDR. 1945–1990. Volume 2: Maassen - Zylla. KG Saur, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-598-11177-0 , p. 718.
• Andreas Herbst:  Riesner, Hans . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Honorary citizen Prof. Johann Riesner at www.chemnitz.de (accessed December 25, 2017).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Johannes Riesner: Gladly a little closer to the truth . In: Streicher Online, June 1996 edition.
2. ^ New Germany of May 20, 1976.