Heinz Rauch (23 November 1914 - 19 December 1962) was a German activist and politician (KPD, SED) who fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.
In February 1957 he took over as head of the East German statistical service, retaining the post till his death in an air crash not quite six years later.
[8] On 5 July 1941, accompanied by Franz Stephany, he was sent back to Norway in order to make contact with the (by this time illegal) Central Committee of the Communist Party in Oslo.
[9] Back in Berlin Heinz Rauch's continuing political involvement during his Swedish exile had not gone unnoticed, and on 2 March 1942 he was formally stripped of his German citizenship.
Heinz Rauch returned to the region administered as the Soviet occupation zone in Germany via Danzig with other activist comrades who had spent the war in Sweden, including Georg Henke, Josef Miller, Wolfgang Steinitz and Paul Verner.
[2][10] The military authorities agreed that Rauch should be permitted to return to his Saxon homeland, where for a couple of months, till March 1946, he attended the "Fritz Heckert" party academy at Ottendorf.
[11] The stated purpose of the party merger, which in the event took effect only in Germany's Soviet occupation zone, was to avoid a return to power of a nationalist-populist government (as had happened in 1933), facilitated by divisions on the political left.
[2] A further practical indication that Rauch had found favour with the military authorities and party establishment came in 1947/48, during which time he served as head of the Soviet News and Information Service for East Saxony.
[1] On his return from Moscow, in October 1957 Heinz Rauch succeeded Fritz Behrens as head of the East German statistical service.
[1][16] Heinz Rauch's work conferred significant and (in East Germany) highly unusual international travel privileges, which evidently extended to family members.
On 19 December 1962 Rauch and his wife Märta, along with two of their sons, were passengers on the second leg of a LOT flight from Brussels to Warsaw, which had touched down in Berlin for a mid-way stop.
[18] Following the accident, during the early afternoon of 28 December 1962, the Party Central Committee and the Ministerial Council held a high-profile celebration ceremony ("Trauerakt") for Rauch and his recently deceased family members at Berlin's Baumschulenweg Crematorium.