November 2026: Franz Wiesner
Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
Life Path
The Nazi military justice system convicted around 1.5 million of the approximately 20 million Wehrmacht soldiers in its roughly 1,300 courts. It sentenced around 30,000 soldiers to death. By the end of the war, around 23,000 death sentences had been carried out. One of these death sentences was handed down to Franz Wiesner, a communist from Chemnitz, who was executed on 13 February
1945 at the Wehrmacht execution site known as ‘Murellenschlucht’.
Franz Wiesner was born in the town of Böhmisch Kamnitz (now Česká Kamenice). As a 17-year-old, having just completed his apprenticeship as a metalworker, he took part in the Chemnitz workers’ resistance against the invading Reichswehr on ‘Bloody Sunday’, 8 August 1919, and was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for “serious breach of the peace”. His subsequent involvement in the Socialist Workers’ Youth, in the ‘Jahn’ workers’ sports club in Altchemnitz, his membership of the KPD in 1930 and the repercussions of unemployment did not go unpunished.
Franz Wiesner was married twice; his first marriage was to Charlotte Wiesner. The couple had two children: Ingeburg and Franz, who died at the age of eleven. His second marriage was to Lisa Magdalene Rausch. The wedding took place on 31 August 1940 in Chemnitz. This marriage produced a son, who was also named Franz.
Franz Wiesner was expelled from Germany in 1937 as a “troublesome foreigner”. In 1940, he regained German citizenship and was thereby once again deemed “fit for military service”. Thanks to his good language skills, he seized every opportunity that presented itself to make contact with Soviet prisoners of war and those forcibly deported, in order to alleviate their plight.
In 1942, Franz Wiesner received his call-up papers for military service. This saved him from a prison sentence, as the Secret State Police had imprisoned him on “suspicion of communist activity”. He had been sentenced to four months’ imprisonment by a special court in Chemnitz on 3 August 1943.
Wiesner was posted to Reval in Estonia (now the Estonian capital, Tallinn), which had been occupied since 1941. “Enemy propaganda” among Wehrmacht personnel concerning the Wehrmacht’s defeat at Stalingrad, listening to “enemy radio stations” and prohibited contact with Soviet prisoners of war led to his re-arrest in November 1943. He was transferred to Berlin-Tegel to face a military court. On 7 November 1944, the court sentenced him to death under Section 5 of the Special War Criminal Law Ordinance of
17 August 1938 for “undermining military morale”. The grounds for the judgement stated, amongst other things, that he had “deliberately associated with prisoners of war in a manner that grossly offended public sentiment”.
The sentence was carried out on 13 February 1945, just a few months before the end of the war. Wiesner’s remains were buried at the Spandau Waldfriedhof cemetery, “In den Kisseln”, in the first row of Section 140, grave number 12. A reburial in Chemnitz did not take place after the end of the war.
Stumbling Stones in Chemnitz
It is a project against forgetting: stumbling stones have been laid in Chemnitz every year since 2007.
Embedded in the pavement, the memorial stones commemorate the tragic fates of fellow citizens who were persecuted, deported, murdered or driven to their deaths during the National Socialist regime.
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