Josef Zinner

Josef Zinner (born March 27, 1894 in Neu Rohlau ; † May 6, 1961 in Redhill ) was a Czechoslovak politician and trade unionist.

Life

Early years and emigration

From 1933 to 1938 Zinner was the chairman of the Union of Miners in Czechoslovakia. Since 1938 he was a member of the executive committee of the German Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Czechoslovak Republic (DSAP).

At the end of 1938, as a result of the annexation of the Sudeten areas by the German Reich in September 1938, Zinner emigrated to Great Britain. There he joined the Trust Community of Sudeten German Social Democrats (TG) led by Wenzel Jaksch , the most important exile organization of the parts of the Sudeten German population that were opposed to the integration of the Sudeten areas into the German Reich. In 1939 Zinner took part in the formation of the all- Czechoslovakian Czechoslovak Trade Union Center in Great Britain , which was responsible for the collection of the TG members loyal to the Czechoslovak state, in particular from among the supporters of the DSAP chairman Ludwig Czech , who was replaced by Jaksch in 1938 , tried.

Head of the DSAP international group

In October 1940, Zinner was the leader of a group of former Sudeten German Social Democrats who, in opposition to Jaksch, conceived an exiled faction of the DSAP, the DSAP-Auslandsgruppe, also known as the Zinner Group . By the end of the war, around a third (350 people) of the former DSAP members in exile joined this group.

The founding of the DSAP foreign group meant the split of the previous trust community under Jaksch: While the rump of the trust community, which existed until autumn 1940, continued to exist, Zinners group established itself as an independent party that loyally stood behind the government in exile led by Edvard Beneš and its politics, while Jaksch and his followers disapproved of this. Zinner rejected the propaganda carried out by Jaksch and the Treugemeinschaft for national autonomy of the Sudeten areas or for a right of self-determination for the Sudeten Germans and instead spoke out in favor of the Sudeten areas remaining in a Czechoslovak state that was to be rebuilt and federalistically built up, with the Sudeten Germans alongside the Czechs and Slovaks should form an equal ethnic group.

According to its conviction of the veiling function of nationalism in the National Socialist ideology, the Zinner group initially rejected a national political solution to the so-called "Sudeten problem", i. H. the transformation of a newly formed Czechoslovak state into a nation state, from which minorities belonging to other ethnic groups, such as the Sudeten Germans, should be removed. The plan discussed in Czechoslovak exile circles at that time of a forced resettlement of the German minority from Czechoslovakia after a re-establishment of the same was accordingly rejected by Zinner and his followers. Because of the resulting common interests, a united front was formed with the Sudeten German communists.

Together with the state-loyal German exile group from Czechoslovakia (the so-called Beuer group ) and the Peres group , the Zinner group formed the unity committee of Sudeten German anti-fascists in Great Britain in October 1942, whose presidium consists of Zinner and the other two group leaders Gustav Beuer and Alfred Peres composed.

In 1943 Zinner became a member of the Sudeten German Committee - representing the Democratic Germans from the ČSR . By changing the tactics of the KSČ in 1943/44, which held the majority in both committees, the DSAP foreign group headed by Zinner was most recently in the camp of supporters of the planned - according to the communist interpretation of the time - still partial forced resettlement of the German minority from post-war Czechoslovakia, which after 1945 by the authorities of the newly established Czechoslovak state with reference to the collective guilt thesis, d. H. subjecting the entire German minority to forced resettlement. Accordingly, active anti-fascists recognized by the Czechoslovak side were also forcibly expelled from the country.

Zinner carried out a signature campaign among the Sudeten German members of the Czechoslovak army in exile, appealing to Beneš to take the German Social Democratic Workers' Party in Czechoslovakia into consideration when forgiving the Czechoslovak State Council.

On the journalistic level, Zinner worked as editor and main collaborator of the group organ Socialist News , which appeared in London (first published on November 6, 1940), as well as an employee of the Sudeten German exile magazine Einheit, which was also published in London . Sudeten German Antifascist Fortnightly .

In spring 1940, Zinner was classified by the National Socialist police as an enemy of the state by the Reich Security Main Office on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who, in the event of a successful invasion of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht, would find subsequent SS special commands with special priority should be made and arrested.

In 1946 Zinner - who did not speak Czech - returned to Czechoslovakia, but went back to Great Britain after the Communist takeover in February 1948. There he was naturalized in 1951.

literature

• Martin K Bachstein: The policy of the trust community of Sudeten German Social Democrats as the main representative of the German exile from the Czechoslovak Republic. In: The year 1945 in Techschslovakia , 1971.
• Johann Wolfgang Brügel: On the history of the Zinner group , ed. for the working group of former German social democrats in Czechoslovakia by Rudolf Zischka, Tann / Niederbayern, undated
• Friedrich G. Kürbisch: Chronicle of the Sudeten German Social Democracy, 1863-1938 , 1982, p. 126.
• Werner Röder / Herbert A. Strauss (Eds.): Politics, Economy, Public Life , 1980, pp. 849f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Zinner on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London).