Josef Wenig

Josef Wenig (17 July 1896 – 16 April 1981) was a German labour and political activist (KPD). After 1945 he became an important figure in the East German political establishment. He was a member of the ruling party's powerful Central Committee between 1954 and his death in 1981. He was also a member of the country's (less powerful) National Parliament ("Volkskammer") between 1950 and 1981.

Life Josef ("Sepp") Wenig was born in Leiter (now Řebří, a part of Svojšín), a small village in the hills to the west of Plzeň in what was, at that time, western Bohemia, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His parents worked in a brickworks. However, by the time he was old enough to attend school the family had relocated to Germany, and he grew up in another rural location, Zeulenroda, a small country town to the west of Chemnitz. It was a feature of the Soviet occupation zone, relaunched in October 1949 as the German Democratic Republic, that the ruling party was closely integrated into workplace structures, and from 1949 Sepp Wenig was a member of the SED sector leadership team at Wismut. 1949 was also the year in which he was appointed a labour inspector at the company's Schneeberg and Auerbach mines. It was also in 1950 that he became a member of the National Parliament . Although voters were able only to vote for (or, at least in theory, against) a single list of candidates in general elections, the Volkskammer contained fixed quotas of members from various approved bloc parties and indeed from approved mass organisations. Sepp Wenig sat, formally, not as a representative of the ruling party but as a representative of the Trade Union Federation (; FDGB). He was also a member of the FDGB national executive between 1952 and 1958. It is perhaps a more eloquent testimony to the way in which his contribution was valued by the authorities that he retained this post till 1966, when at the age of 70 he had comfortably passed the normal retirement age. He only retired formally in July 1968, by which time he was 72. 1976 Star of People's Friendship

In Zeulenroda and in Johanngeorgenstadt Polytechnic Secondary Schools were named after Josef Wenig. However, after 1990 the names were changed again, in the context of a wider reconfiguring of the schools system in what had been the German Democratic Republic.