Johannes Zieger

Johannes Zieger , called Jean Zieger (born September 3, 1910 in Waldsee (Palatinate) , † April 5, 1981 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein ) was a German communist and resistance fighter during the National Socialist era.

Life

The factory worker and taxi entrepreneur Johannes Zieger belonged to a communist resistance group from the Speyer area . As “the man with the milk can”, he was a courier between communist resistance groups in the Upper Palatinate: as a sign that he was not being watched, he had a milk can hanging on the handlebars of his motorcycle. He was arrested in February 1935 and taken from the Speyer District Court Prison to Frankenthal Prison on February 27 . The mayor of Waldsee and even the local group leader of the NSDAP campaigned for his release - in vain. He was transferred from Frankenthal to Munich on October 9, 1935 .

In the summer of 1935, the attorney general at the Higher Regional Court in Munich brought charges against Zieger, together with the Speyer resistance group, of preparation for high treason. In detail, all 17 comrades-in-arms were accused of conspiratorial meetings with like-minded comrades from Ludwigshafen and Mannheim, collecting donations for the illegal district administration and to support political prisoners as well as smuggling in publications from the Saar area.

On October 31, 1935, the 2nd criminal senate of the Munich Higher Regional Court passed its judgments. Johannes Zieger received two years in prison and three years loss of honor.

After the “regular” prison sentence had expired, Zieger was imprisoned with most of his colleagues in the Dachau concentration camp and in 1943 was drafted into the notorious Penal Division 999 . Only after several years as an American prisoner of war did Zieger return to his home village in the Palatinate.

Elise Rohr (née Tremmel), Johannes Zieger's partner, worked alongside Jakob Schultheis and Stanislaus Peplinski in the Speyer Comradeship resistance group , which campaigned for cooperation with foreign prisoners of war and forced laborers. She regularly passed them food.

literature

• LA Speyer: Johannes Zieger files (J6-23495)
• Fritz Gerbes: Waldsee and its history . Speyer, 1982
• Hermann W. Morweiser: From the anti-fascist resistance in Speyer . VVN Association of Antifascists. Speyer 1983
• Michael Schepua: National Socialism in the Palatinate Province: Rule practice and everyday life in the communities of today's Ludwigshafen district 1933-1945 . Mannheim historical research. Vol. 20. Mannheim 2000. ISBN 3-920671-40-6