Franz Ziegler

Life Ziegler was born in Warchau, at that time a hamlet separated by a series of marshes and lakes from Brandenburg an der Havel nearby. He was the thirteenth recorded child of the local Protestant minister. He attended secondary school at Brandenburg and went on to study Jurisprudence (Law) at Halle, qualifying and then working as a lawyer. He proved a superb organiser, displaying perhaps the greatest administrative talent of any state officer in Prussia.

As Lord Mayor he lost little time in issuing a set of guidelines and protocols on how the municipal officials and councillors should conduct their work, setting out clear divisions between different areas of responsibility, and rules for the timely implementation of duties. By streamlining the municipal police force he restored much needed order on the streets. He implemented national strategy by setting up a "Forced Labour Institution" (a so-called "poor house"), and through strict supervision of the work-shy he succeeded in clearing the streets of beggars and whores. He then turned his attention to sorting out the municipal finances. His reforms of municipal taxation included the first imposition in German of a progressive income tax

In 1844 Franz Ziegler became the first Lord Mayor in Prussia to publish municipal budgets, giving rise to the possibility of a certain level of public verification. This made the municipal administration accountable to the people on whose behalf it operated. The first open meeting of the town council took place at Ziegler's instigation on 11 February 1848, enabling the councillors to interact with members of the public.

In 1848 Ziegler was a member of the short-lived Prussian National Assembly, and in 1849 he was elected to the second chamber of the Prussian House of Representatives (as the second chamber of the country's new parliament later came to be known), where for most purposes he occupied a position on the moderate left.

As a member of the second chamber in 1849 Ziegler voted in support of "taxation rejection". Context for the vote involved a liberal majority in the Second Chamber refusing to vote for a supplementary income tax which the king wished to levy in order to fund increased military spending in the wake of the 1848 revolutions, the democratising impact of which he was keen to restrict. Despite being rejected by the vote in the assembly, the supplementary tax was levied anyway, and the subservience of the new parliament was thereby asserted. Further demonstration of government supremacy came when Franz Ziegler was charged with High treason and Sedition. In August 1867 he was elected to the Reichstag of the newly established North German Confederation, representing Breslau-West and again in 1874 he was re-elected to the Reichstag, still as a Progressive Party member representing Breslau-West.