Max Seydewitz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Max Seydewitz, 1951

Max Seydewitz (born December 19, 1892 in Forst (Lausitz) , † February 8, 1987 in Dresden ) was a German politician ( SPD , SED ) and Prime Minister of Saxony from 1947 to 1952 .

Life

After an apprenticeship as a printer , Seydewitz joined the SPD in 1910, from 1918 to 1920 he worked as an editor of the social democratic Volksblatt in Halle / Saale, from 1920 to 1931 he was editor- in- chief of the Saxon Volksblatt , a daily newspaper in Zwickau that tends to be party-linked . In 1924 Seydewitz was elected to the Reichstag , where, alongside Paul Levi and Kurt Rosenfeld, he was one of the speakers of the left wing of the parliamentary group, from 1927 to 1932 he was co-editor of the class struggle , the most important organ of the Marxist left in the SPD. In 1929 Max Seydewitz married Ruth Lewy , who shared his political ideas. He was previously married to Erna Seydewitz (née Hilbert), with whom Max Seydewitz had three children.

1931 Seydewitz, together with other representatives of the left wing after breaking the party discipline from the SPD excluded , the excluded constituted themselves as the Socialist Workers Party of Germany (SAPD) , the Co-Chairman Seydewitz was together with Kurt Rosenfeld up to its outlet in the spring 1933rd Within the SAPD, Seydewitz initially cooperated with the revolutionary-Marxist wing around Fritz Sternberg , Paul Frölich and Jacob Walcher , in order to re- approach the left-wing, social-democratic-pacifist wing around Anna Siemsen at the end of 1932 . In 1933, after the handover of power to the National Socialists and the Reichstag fire , Seydewitz went into exile. Stops were the Czechoslovak Republic , the Netherlands , Norway and Sweden in 1940 , where he was interned first in Loka Brunn and eight weeks in Längmora . He then worked as a journalist in Stockholm , was arrested again in early 1942 and was given a forced residency for Lund . On March 29, 1934, he was the second Ausbürgerungsliste of the German Reich in the German Reich Gazette expatriated . A rapprochement with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) began in 1933, and Max and Ruth Seydewitz had been suspected of being KPD submarines in left-wing social democratic groups in exile such as the Revolutionary Socialists of Germany (RSD) around Siegfried Aufhäuser since the mid-1930s who was reinforced by Seydewitz's defense of the Moscow trials . His sons Fridolin Seydewitz (1919–2016) and Horst Seydewitz (1915–1997) spent several years in the labor and prison camp on the Kolyma in the northeast of the Soviet Union and did not return to Dresden until March 5, 1948.

Grave of Max Seydewitz in the Dresden Heidefriedhof

1945 returned Seydewitz to Berlin, where he in 1946 member of the SED was, was briefly he the chief editor SED theory organ unit , and then from 1946 to 1947 the director post at the Berlin Radio to take over. In 1947 the Saxon state parliament elected Seydewitz as prime minister, from 1947 to 1949 Seydewitz was also a member of the SED party executive and in 1950 became a member of the People's Chamber . From 1951 to 1952 Seydewitz was attacked as part of an intra-party campaign against former SAPD members and had to practice “self-criticism”. In 1952 he was replaced as Prime Minister of Saxony and he was allowed to keep the mandate of the People's Chamber. A certain rehabilitation meant his appointment as general director of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden in 1955 , an office he held until 1968. He remained a member of the People's Chamber until his death on February 8, 1987.

In 1955, Seydewitz published in newspaper articles and his book The Invincible City the fictitious claim known as the “Noble Legend” that the American Charles A. Noble had directed the air raids on Dresden from his Dresden Villa San Remo .

Works

  • The crisis of capitalism and the abandonment of the working class . Publishing house of the Marxist Book Community, Berlin 1931
  • Death Rays and Other New Weapons of War , with Kurt Doberer. Malik Publishing House, London 1936
  • Stalin or Trotsky? - The USSR and Trotskyism. A historical study. Malik Publishing House, London 1938.
  • Swastika over Europe? Vannier, Paris 1939
  • Civil life in wartime Germany. The story of the home front. New York 1945.
  • It's about Germany . Sachsen-Verlag, Dresden 1949. (collected radio commentaries 1946–1947).
  • Anti-Semitism in the Federal Republic . With Ruth Seydewitz, ed. Committee for German Unity, Berlin 1956
  • The Dresden Gallery Book: 400 Years of the Dresden Picture Gallery , with Ruth Seydewitz, Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1957
  • Germany between Oder and Rhine: A contribution to the latest German history . Kongress-Verlag, Berlin 1958
  • Destruction and reconstruction of Dresden Berlin (East) 1955 (from 3rd edition: The invincible city )
  • The Dresden art treasures: To the history of d. Grünen Gewölbes and other Dresden art collections , with Ruth Seydewitz, VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1960
  • Ruth and Max Seydewitz, The Lady with the Ermine: The greatest art theft of all time. Henschelverlag, Berlin (East) 1963
  • It was worth living. Memories of an old worker functionary. Dietz Verlag, Berlin (East) 1976.
  • Dresden, muses and people. A contribution to the history of the city, its art and culture. Book publisher Der Morgen, Berlin, 1988

literature

Web links

Commons : Max Seydewitz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order. De Gruyter Saur, Munich / New York / London / Paris 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 4 (reprinted 2010).
  2. ↑ deutschlandradiokultur.de
personal data
SURNAME Seydewitz, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politicians (SPD, SAPD, SED), MdR, MdV, Prime Minister of Saxony
DATE OF BIRTH December 19, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Forst (Lausitz)
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1987
Place of death Dresden