page_title: Heinrich Rau
section_title: New start in Brandenburg
hierarchical_section_title: Heinrich Rau / East Germany / 1945–1949 / New start in Brandenburg
context_page_description: Heinrich Gottlob "Heiner" Rau was a German communist politician during the time of the Weimar Republic; subsequently, during the Spanish Civil War, he was a leading member of the International Brigades and after World War II an East German statesman.
  Rau grew up in a suburb of Stuttgart, where early on he became active in socialist youth organizations. After military service in World War I, he participated in the German Revolution of 1918-19. From 1920 onward, he was a leading agricultural policy maker of the Communist Party of Germany. This ended in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power. Shortly afterward Rau was thrown in jail for two years. As an enemy of the Nazi regime in Germany he was imprisoned, in total, for more than half of the time of Hitler's rule. After his first imprisonment he emigrated in 1935 to the Soviet Union. From there, in 1937, he went on to Spain, where he participated in the Spanish Civil War as a leader of one of the International Brigades. In 1939, he was arrested in France, and was delivered by the Vichy regime back to Nazi Germany in 1942. After a few months in a Gestapo prison, he was transferred to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in March 1943.
context_section_description: When the war was over, Rau went to Vienna for some weeks and helped the KPD representatives in the city gather liberated political prisoners from Germany. He left Vienna in July 1945, when he led a car convoy with 120 former Mauthausen inmates to the Soviet occupied part of Berlin.
  In September 1945, the Soviets appointed Rau a member of the provisional chairmanship of the Province of Brandenburg with the title of a vice-president and responsibility for food, agriculture and forests. Rau succeeded Edwin Hoernle, who had held this position since the end of June and became chairman of the central administration for agriculture and forests in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ). In his new position, Rau was a member of the commission for the execution of the land reform in the province. In spring 1946 he assumed responsibility for
  economy and transport in Brandenburg. In this capacity, he was, from June 1946 onwards, chairman of the newly established sequester commission in the province. 1946 was also the year of the forced merger of eastern KPD and eastern SPD into the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), resulting in Rau's membership in the SED. Important 1946 events in Brandenburg were in November  elections, which preceded an official status change from a province to a federal state in the following year. Afterwards, from 1946 until 1948, Rau was state parliament delegate and Minister for Economic Planning of Brandenburg.
caption: Stamp advertising the 1945 land reform
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