Heinz Kuhrig (4 March 1929 – 13 September 2001) was a German politician of the Socialist Unity Party (SED).

Kuhrig served as the GDR's Agriculture Minister in the 1970s following Georg Ewald's death in a car accident.

The son of a working-class family, Kuhrig completed an apprenticeship as an industrial electrician from 1943 to 1945 after attending elementary school and worked as an agricultural machinery mechanic from 1945 to 1946.

[1][4] After studying at the CPSU Higher Party School "W. I. Lenin" in Moscow for a year, he returned to the now renamed Council for Agricultural Production and Food Economy as State Secretary in 1968.

In September 1973, longtime Agriculture Minister and Kuhrig's superior Georg Ewald died in a car accident.

[1][2] He was replaced by Bruno Lietz, who had only been made head of the Agriculture Department of the Central Committee of the SED in November 1981.