Activities and affiliations

What people did, and whom they served in that activity.

Activity

All 19 Political and party leadership 15 Legislature and state representation 1 Military command 1 Agriculture and land policy 1 Ideology and propaganda 1 Social movements and organizing 1

State, movement or organization

All 35 Soviet Union 22 Hungary 4 People’s Republic of China 2 Austria state institutions 1 Finland state institutions 1 Russian Empire 1 Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries 1 Russian Provisional Government 1 Communist Party of Germany (KPD) 1
All 9 affiliations by country

Austria

Austria state institutions 1

China

People’s Republic of China 2

Finland

Finland state institutions 1

Germany

Communist Party of Germany (KPD) 1

Hungary

Hungary 4

Russia

Russian Empire 1 Party of Left Socialist Revolutionaries 1 Russian Provisional Government 1

Soviet Union

Soviet Union 22

Agriculture and land policy · Communist Party of Germany (KPD) people 1

Clear all

Heinrich Rau

Heinrich Rau
East Germany Communism East Germany Germany 1899–1961 ○ Heart attack

Communist who chaired the German Economic Commission, the forerunner of the GDR government, and led East German economic policy

Born in Feuerbach near Stuttgart, he worked as a metal presser at Bosch and passed through the Spartacists and the USPD into the KPD in 1919, becoming the party’s leading agricultural policy maker in the 1920s. Imprisoned after the Nazis came to power, he emigrated to the Soviet Union and in the Spanish Civil War commanded the XI International Brigade. Interned in France and handed to the Gestapo by Vichy in 1942, he was liberated at Mauthausen. In March 1948 he became chairman of the German Economic Commission (DWK), which carried out the eastern currency reform and the first plans. In the GDR he was a Politburo member, deputy prime minister and chairman of the State Planning Commission; at the Politburo session of 8 July 1953 he recommended replacing Ulbricht, yet kept his posts. Minister of Machine Construction and then of Foreign Trade, he died of a heart attack in 1961.

Career timeline
  • 1919Joined the KPD
  • 1923Head of the KPD agricultural division
  • 1937–1938Commander of the XI International Brigade
  • 1943–1945Mauthausen concentration camp
  • 1948–1949Chairman of the German Economic Commission
  • 1950–1961SED Politburo member; deputy prime minister
  • 1955–1961Minister of Foreign and Inter-German Trade