Max Sievers

Memorial plaque on Gneisenaustraße 41 in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Gravestone ,gerichtstrasse 38, in Berlin-Wedding

Max Georg Wilhelm Sievers (born July 11, 1887 in Berlin-Tempelhof ; † January 17, 1944 in Brandenburg an der Havel ) was chairman of the German Freethinkers Association and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Sievers was born on July 11, 1887 in the Tempelhof apartment of his unmarried mother, the handworker Emmy Amalie Amanda Getrude Sievers, and his grandmother at Schöneberger Weg 4. His mother was a Protestant denomination. After attending school, he carried out various activities. In January 1915 Sievers involuntarily had to be under arms and suffered a serious wound. After the war he became politically active, including as editor of the Workers' Council , joined the USPD in 1919 and switched to the KPD in 1920 ; at times he was the secretary of their headquarters. However, he left this after a short time, criticizing the March 1921 campaign, and joined the short-lived Communist Working Group (KAG), of which he was a member of the executive committee.

On October 1, 1922 Sievers became managing director of the Association of Freethinkers for Cremation (VdFfF), founded in Berlin in 1905, which was increasingly politicized by Sievers. In 1925 he started publishing the central freethinker organ, Der Freidenker , was elected chairman of the German freethinkers association in 1927 and rejoined the SPD . In 1930 the freethinkers were renamed the "German Freethinkers Association" and already had over 600,000 members.

After the Reichstag fire on February 27, 1933, Sievers was taken into " protective custody " in the SA prison in Papestrasse . In April 1933 he was released unexpectedly and emigrated to Brussels. On August 23, 1933, Germany carried out Sievers' expatriation - he was one of 33 people on the First Expatriation List of the German Reich published on August 25, 1933 . Sievers meanwhile continued to work. Der Freidenker continued to appear from Saarbrücken . After the victory of the National Socialists in the referendum in the Saar area in 1935, he published the Sievers-Korrespondenz (SIKO) from Brussels and, from the beginning of 1937, the weekly newspaper Free Germany . All of these publications were illegally distributed in Germany.

Sievers and his colleagues agitated against the tyranny of National Socialism, described the Concordat of the Catholic Church (1933) as an alliance between the clergy and the National Socialists, and promoted resistance and the overthrow of the regime. Sievers is convinced that a socialist-democratic order in the form of council democracy should follow after the victory over National Socialism. In his book Our Struggle against the “Third Reich” (1939) he explained these considerations. He sharply criticized the policies of the SPD and KPD in the years before 1933. In February 1939, the Sievers couple emigrated to the USA, but returned to Belgium in the same year after Switzerland had refused his visa.

On May 17, 1940 , the Wehrmacht occupied Brussels and Sievers was arrested. He was able to escape and hid with his Belgian wife under an assumed name in Chéreng in northern France. He was arrested by the Gestapo on June 3, 1943, sentenced to death on November 17, 1943 by the People's Court under the chairmanship of Roland Freisler for “preparing for high treason with the benefit of the enemy” and on January 17, 1944 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison by guillotine executed.

Honors

Feb. 10, 1952 - Construction of a grave of honor of the city of Berlin on the urn cemetery Richtstrasse in Berlin-Wedding , Richtstrasse
January 17, 1984 - Placement of a memorial plaque at Gneisenaustraße 41 in Berlin-Kreuzberg

Fonts

Our fight against the Third Reich - from the Nazi dictatorship to socialist democracy. Holmström Förlag, Stockholm 1939.
Gernot Bandur: Max Sievers. Free thinker-socialist-fighter against fascism. In: Freidenker [Special] , Cologne, 63rd year, No. 3, fig.
Volker Mueller (Ed.): Max Sievers: Why cremation? A. Lenz Verlag, Neustadt am Rbge, ISBN 978-3-933037-03-9 .

literature

Sievers, Max . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945. 2., revised. and strong exp. Edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

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

Literature by and about Max Sievers in the catalog of the German National Library
Short biography on inidia.de
Max Sievers. And: in memory of Max Sievers. In: Humanistic Press Service , January 20, 2016.
Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center

Individual evidence

↑ Max Sievers birth certificate, civil registry office Tempelhof No. 70, born in 1887, digitized at ancestry.de
↑ 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 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 3 (reprinted 2010).

personal data
SURNAME	Sievers, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Sievers, Max Georg Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Chairman of the German Freethinkers Association
DATE OF BIRTH	July 11, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH	Berlin-Tempelhof
DATE OF DEATH	January 17, 1944
Place of death	Brandenburg on the Havel

[1] Max Sievers birth certificate, civil registry office Tempelhof No. 70, born in 1887, digitized at ancestry.de

[2] 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 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 3 (reprinted 2010).