Erich Zeigner

Erich Zeigner.

Erich Zeigner (17 February 1886, Erfurt – 5 April 1949, Leipzig) was Prime Minister of the German state of Saxony during the attempted communist uprising of 1923.

In August 1921 Zeigner was Saxon Minister of Justice. On 21 March 1923 he became the third prime minister of the Free State of Saxony. On 10 October 1923 he appointed two members of the Communist Party to his government. On 27 October 1923, German Chancellor Gustav Stresemann issued an ultimatum demanding a dismissal of the Communist ministers. Zeigner refused to comply and, two days later, was deposed as prime minister by the President of Germany Friedrich Ebert (SPD) under the authority of Article 48 of the Weimar constitution. Zeigner was replaced by a commissioner.

On 21 November 1923 Zeigner was arrested for alleged corruption Zeigner in office and sentenced in the spring of 1924 to three years in prison, from which he was dismissed in August 1925 on probation.

In 1932, he signed the Urgent Appeal against the Nazi Party. He was arrested in August 1933 after the Nazis had come to power but acquitted at trial in 1935. Since then he had to live by doing odd jobs. 1939 re-imprisoned for a short time, he worked as a bookkeeper in Leipzig. After the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944 Zeigner and Stanislaw Trabalski as well as Heinrich Fleißner was kidnapped, and other Leipzig Solzialdemokraten was arrested in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In August 1944 he was arrested in Buchenwald concentration camp.

Zeigner died of natural causes on 5 April 1949. It has been suggested that after his dismissal, fear for his life and the welfare of his family prevented Zeigner from either resisting his dismissal at the time or publicly denouncing the Nazi regime at a later date.


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