Walter Scheler

Grave of Walter Scheler in the north cemetery in Jena

Walter Scheler (born April 18, 1923 in Sonneberg , † August 19, 2008 in Jena ) was a German accountant who took part in the uprising of June 17, 1953 in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), arrested by Soviet occupation forces and arrested one day later sentenced to 25 years in a camp in Weimar and pardoned in 1961 . In 2003 he became an honorary citizen of the city of Jena .

Life

After graduating from secondary school, Scheler began a commercial apprenticeship with a lawyer in 1938 . In the same year he became a member of the Hitler Youth (HJ). In 1940 he was drafted into the German Wehrmacht and fought until 1945 as a member of the Navy in World War II . Shortly before the end of the war in 1945, he was taken prisoner by the British and was released in early 1946.

Scheler returned to Sonneberg and became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In April 1946 he became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) through the forced unification of the SPD and KPD . Until 1949 he was temporarily unemployed and then an employee of the People's Police (VP) in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany. In 1949 Scheler resigned from the SED, which is why he was denied a degree in economics that he was striving for by state authorities and he resigned from the police force .

On June 6, 1952, Scheler and his wife and son were forcibly relocated to Jena as part of the so-called " Ungeziefer Action ", in which citizens and their families were judged to be "politically unreliable" and had to leave villages on the inner-German border . There he became an accountant at the German Trade Center (DHZ) coal .

On June 17, 1953, demonstrations took place in Jena as part of the GDR-wide uprising, in which 20,000 people took part. In the morning it came to the storming of the district leadership Jena-Stadt of the SED by demonstrators. These formed a group of speakers to which Scheler belonged. Around 2 p.m., Soviet tanks pulled up and put down the unrest. Scheler was arrested by Soviet troops with Herbert Bähnisch and Alfred Diener and transferred to the Soviet military tribunal in Weimar the following day . On June 18, 1953, Scheler was sentenced to 25 years in a camp.

From the end of July 1953, Scheler was imprisoned in the Bautzen correctional facility . He remained in solitary confinement until 1956 . In 1961 Scheler was released from prison on the basis of a pardon . He returned to Jena and became an unskilled worker in the VEB Jenaer Glaswerk , warehouse clerk in a furniture store and finally the representative for occupational safety at the HO restaurants in Jena . In 1988 he retired.

After the fall of the Wall and the peaceful revolution in the GDR , Scheler was involved as a contemporary witness in the process of coming to terms with June 17, 1953. On November 15, 1993, the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation declared the verdict null and void, and Scheler was fully rehabilitated . In 2003 he was awarded honorary citizenship of the city of Jena.

The Jena History Workshop has been awarding the Walter Scheler Prize since 2009 .

literature

• Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk :  Scheler, Walter . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: June 17, 1953 in Thuringia. Prehistory, events, consequences . 2003.

Web links

• Walter Scheler on www.jena.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Walter Scheler. jugendopposition.de (Federal Agency for Civic Education / Robert Havemann Society), accessed on April 3, 2017 . 
2. ↑ Federal Agency for Civic Education , contemporary witness report Walter Scheler (mp3) on: www.17juni53.de
3. ↑ University of Jena: June 17, 1953 ( Memento of the original from May 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. On: www.uni-jena.de .
4. ↑ Official Journal of the City of Jena 23/03 (award of honorary citizenship to Mr. Walter Scheler) dec. on May 14, 2003, decision no. 03/05/47/1138. "The city of Jena gives Mr. Walter Scheler honorary citizenship personally and on behalf of the victims and those politically persecuted in connection with the popular uprising on June 17, 1953 and the SED dictatorship."
5. ^ Jena History Workshop e. V., Walter Scheler Prize ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Jena, 2012.