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Heinrich George | Helmut Kind | Karl Heinrich | Ewald Ernst | Kurt Müller | Alfred Weiland | Arno Wend | Helmut Brandt | Georg Dertinger | Max Fechner | Karl Wilhelm Fricke | Wolfgang Harich | Walter Janka | Walter Linse | Paul Merker | Sigrid Paul | Rudolf Bahro | Heinz Brandt | Jürgen Fuchs | Gerulf Pannach | Michael Sallmann | Hans-Joachim Helwig-Wilson | Bärbel Bohley | Freya Klier | Stephan Krawczyk | Vera Lengsfeld | Ulrike Poppe
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 Max Fechner was within the system of political persecution, not only a victim but also a perpetrator. As a former East German justice minister, he was imprisoned in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen from 1953 to 1955.
Fechner was born in 1892 and was active in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) since his eighteenth birthday. Due to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, he had to continue his political activities underground, which led to multiple arrests.
After the end of World War II, he took over leadership positions in the newly formed Social Democratic Party. He was a proponent of the forced merger of the KPD and SPD, and was named Minister of Justice after the founding of the GDR in October 1949. During this period he significantly contributed to the coordination of the judicial system in East Germany.
During the uprising of June 17th, 1953, Fechner criticized the state’s crackdown on demonstrators. He was dismissed of his office "because of partisan and anti-state behavior,", and arrested and excluded from the SED. After two years of detention in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, the Supreme Court of the GDR sentenced him to eight years in prison. Throughout the course of de-Stalinization after the Twentieth Party Congress in Moscow (February 1956), Fechner was released in 1957 and reinstated in the SED (, but never officially rehabilitated). He died in 1973 in Berlin. |
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