Heinrich Fleissner

Heinrich Fleißner (born May 27, 1888 in Hirschberg (Saale) , † April 22, 1959 in Leipzig ) was a German politician ( USPD / SPD / SED ) and police chief in Leipzig.

Life

Fleißner was born as the son of a tannery worker in Hirschberg an der Saale as one of eight children. He attended elementary school and then did a glass apprenticeship. In 1905, at the age of just 17, he joined the SPD and the trade union of the Glaserverband. From 1905 to 1908 he regularly attended party and trade union training courses to deepen his knowledge of the fundamentals of social democracy.

Politics and profession

In 1909 he settled in Leipzig. He found a job as a warehouse keeper in the consumer association Zwenkau. Later became the manager of the branches in Eythra and Lobstädt . In Lobstädt he founded the first local SPD association.

From 1916 to 1918 he was used as a driver in the artillery during the First World War on the Western Front . At the end of 1918 he returned to Leipzig, where he became a member of the USPD, in which he quickly gained influence. In the spring of 1919 Richard Lipinski made him district party secretary. Fleißner returned to the SPD in 1920 and became editor of the Leipziger Volkszeitung . From 1921 to 1923 he was a city councilor and was mainly involved in the finance committee. In 1922 Fleißner became chairman of the district executive committee of the Leipzig SPD. In March / April 1923, Fleißner was appointed police chief in Leipzig by Prime Minister Erich Zeigner . He held this office until 1933.

After the National Socialists came to power , Fleißner lost his office in March 1933. Immediately after his release, he was taken into protective custody from April 4 to May 20, 1933 . He was then unemployed for several months before he found employment with an insurance company in 1934. In 1937 he became the managing director of his son's bakery business.

In 1935 he found a connection to the illegal district executive of the SPD headed by Stanislaw Trabalski . It was mainly thanks to Fleißner that after a short, joint imprisonment with Erich Zeigner and Stanislaw Trabalski (November / December 1939), contacts to social democratic friends like Carlo Mierendorff and Julius Leber in Berlin and to the liberal-conservative opposition group around the one who personally knew him, former Mayor of Leipzig Carl Friedrich Goerdeler could be included. After the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 , Fleißner was again deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp along with Stanislaw Trabalski, Erich Zeigner and other Leipzig Social Democrats on July 22, 1944 , where he remained until October 2, 1944.

post war period

On April 19, 1945 he was able to return to the office of police chief through the American occupation authorities. However, this office was withdrawn from him immediately after the SMAD came to power on July 2, 1945. After the forced unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED , Fleißner was only a simple member of the party. In the course of the progressive Stalinization in the following years, he was expelled from the party on April 15, 1951 as a “mercenary of American capital”. Convinced that this socialist unity party was doomed, Fleißner died of a heart attack on April 22, 1959 in his Leipzig apartment.

literature

• Mike Schmeitzner : Heinrich Fleißner (1888–1959): Social Democratic Continuity from the 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 [et al.] 1997, ISBN 3-631-47385-0 , pp. 69-85.

Web links

• Fumigate the nests of the Schumacher agents. (PDF; 483 kB). Leipziger Volkszeitung from November 15, 1950