Hans Ziegler was born on 15 July 1912 in Chemnitz. His mother, Maria (born in 1891, née Hirschmann), was a member of the KPD; his father, Johann Baptist Ziegler (born in 1890), was a core maker and not a member of any party, though he supported the political activities of his wife and sons.

Both were originally from Nuremberg; they lived in Chemnitz from 1910 onwards and had four children together. Two of their sons joined the workers’ youth movement. Willy Ziegler was a member of the SAJ; as late as 1933, he was distributing illegal leaflets against the Nazis. He was arrested in Reitzenhain (Erzgebirge), sentenced to one year and six months’ imprisonment, and imprisoned in Bautzen. Conscripted into the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, he was killed in action in Poland.

His brother Hans Ziegler was also initially a member of the Socialist Workers’ Youth, the youth organisation of the Social Democratic Party, before joining the Communist Youth Organisation in 1926. There, he was active in his neighbourhood of Schloßchemnitz. His active political work began with the preparations for the
3rd Reich Youth Meeting of the organisation, which took place in Chemnitz at Easter 1928. To protect political activities and public events from thugs from the SS and SA, he joined the Red Youth Front. He took part in anti-Nazi actions both in his home town and in Limbach. In 1932, he travelled with older comrades from the Red Front Fighters’ League to the Reich Rally in Erfurt. He was closely involved in the preparations for the 1932 Reichstag elections and continued his commitment even after 30 January 1933, the day power was transferred to the NSDAP.

Following the Reichstag fire on 27 February 1933, the work had to be organised partly in secret in order to win over the population for the election on 5 March 1933. Arrested at the end of May 1933, he was sent to Sachsenburg concentration camp on 3 June 1933. There he was given prisoner number 536. On 27 June 1933, he was transferred to the Chemnitz Police Headquarters for interrogation, after which he was sent to the concentration camp on the Zschopau for a second time. Released after more than a year in detention, he continued his work, distributing leaflets and collecting money for the underground movement. To escape the threat of further arrest, he emigrated to what was then Czechoslovakia. His escape from Chemnitz via Olbernhau in the Ore Mountains to Komotau (Czech: Chomutov),
the industrial town in northern Bohemia. From there, Hans Ziegler reached Prague on 10 July 1934, where the central contact point and the aid committee for German emigrants were based.

The Czech literary historian Professor Dr Frantisek Xaver Salda had founded the committee in October 1933; it provided urgent support to thousands of political refugees. The organisation was based in Prague II and was known simply as the Salda Committee. Hans Ziegler did not remain idle whilst in exile. He became involved in refugee aid and volunteered as a courier to Germany – a risky undertaking that put his life in danger. The German emigrants were housed in the village of Mesice, north-east of Prague, in a disused castle. Organised sports competitions, cultural events and help with the harvest fostered lively interaction and encouragement from the local population.

Following the military coup in Spain in the summer of 1936, a global solidarity campaign – organised, amongst others, by the Communist International – was launched in defence of the Spanish Republic. At the end of 1937, Hans Ziegler volunteered for the International Brigades in Spain. From February 1938, he was deployed in the fighting
on the northern front. It was not until April 1946 that his parents received news of their son Hans’s death. They were still living in the flat at 105 Leipziger Straße and, until then, had had no certainty as to his fate. Hermann Leipold, a fellow fighter from the Ernst Thälmann Battalion of the 11th International Brigade who had returned from exile in France, Hermann Leipold – who had gone to Spain with him at Christmas 1937 – informed the district leadership of the SED in Chemnitz in a letter about Hans Ziegler’s final engagement near Belchite (province of Zaragoza); he had been killed in action on 2 March 1938: “Dear Comrade Ziegler, I am sorry to rob you of your last hope, but it would be a mistake to keep you clinging to a hope that will never be fulfilled...”

Author: VVN-BdA Chemnitz