Johannes Giesberts

Johannes Giesberts (3 February 1865 - 7 August 1938) was a German politician of the Centre Party in the Weimar Republic. He most notably served as the first Reich Postal Minister, which was a successor to the Reichspost, from 1919 to 1922 under Friedrich Ebert.

Giesberts was born in Straelen. Initially pursuing to become a baker like his father, he began an apprenticeship before becoming a wage laborer in many different positions. He became active in trade union politics during this time, joining the Catholic Workers' Movement in 1893 and becoming a city councillor in Mönchengladbach. Giesberts took courses from the People's Association for Catholic Germany and co-founded the Christian Metalworkers' Association. He quit working as a laborer in 1899, becoming an editor for the Westdeutsche Arbeiterzeitung, which was the organ of the Catholic workers' associations. In 1905 he was elected to the Reichstag for Essen, staying there until 1918 as a loyal member of the Centre Party. He then joined the Weimar National Assembly from 1919 to 1920.

In 1919 he was appointed Reich Postal Minister. In this position he oversaw the first commemorative, semi-postal, and airmail for the Weimar Republic and merged Bavaria and Württemberg's telegraph agencies into the Reichspost in accordance to the Weimar Constitution. He resigned in 1922, returning to working in the Reichstag full-time until 1933, when the Nazi Party took power. After they took power, he was briefly a prisoner and then became politically silent, with the Gestapo labelling him as having "no longer carried out any activity". He died in 1938 in Mönchengladbach. Provided by Wikipedia