Wolfgang Rauchfuß (27 November 1931 in Grüna – 15 August 2005 in Berlin) was a member of the

Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states. Names The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian ''Politbyuro'' (), itself a contraction ...

of East Germany's ruling SED (party). He was also a government minister and deputy chairman of the country's

Ministerial Council Ministerial council or joint ministerial council can refer to: * EU–GCC Joint Council and Ministerial Meeting, the regular joint ministerial meeting between the European Union and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf * Franco- ...

Life

Rauchfuß was born into a working-class family in a western quarter of

Chemnitz Chemnitz (; from 1953 to 1990: Karl-Marx-Stadt , ) is the third-largest city in the German state of Saxony after Leipzig and Dresden. It is the 28th largest city of Germany as well as the fourth largest city in the area of former East Germany a ...

, part of the industrial belt in the southern part of what then counted as central Germany. He completed his secondary schooling in 1946 and embarked on a three-year traineeship as a mechanic. Also in 1946 he joined the newly formed Free German Youth (FDJ / ''Freie Deutsche Jugend'') in which he progressed so that by 1949/50 he had become a full-time FDJ instructor with the organisation's regional leadership in Berlin. After the war had ended in May 1945

had found itself in the Soviet occupation zone of what remained of Germany and in October 1949 the entire area under Soviet administration became a new stand-alone state, the German Democratic Republic. Although independent of the new Federal Republic of Germany to the west, the new East German state retained the fraternal support of the Soviet Union. In 1950 Wolfgang Rauchfuß took a government job as a foreign trade official. Although the country had only been established in 1949, the basis for a return to one- party government had already been created in October 1946, through a controversial merger between the Communist Party and the more moderately left-wing SPD (party). By the time Rauchfuß celebrated his nineteenth birthday there was little sign of former SPD members in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED / ''Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands''), the controlling positions in which were all occupied by men who before April 1946 would have defined themselves politically as Communists. 1951 was the year in which Rauchfuß joined the ruling SED (party). In 1952 he moved on to study at the Academy for Foreign Trade, after which he took a job as a domestic and export sales manager for precision mechanics and optics. From 1957 till 1959 he was Deputy General Director of Polygraph Export GmbH and in 1960 General Director of Office Machinery exports. Between 1958 and 1961 he took a correspondence study course with the Berlin Academy of Economics which led to a degree in Economics. From 1961 till 1965 Wolfgang Rauchfuß served as Deputy Minister for foreign and inter-German trade. He was appointed Secretary of State in The Ministry in March 1965, at the same time joining the country's

. Later that year, in December 1965, he became Deputy Chairman of the

. The constitutional arrangement sunder which the German Democratic Republic was governed were modeled on those originally created for the Soviet Union. They implicitly - and after 1968 expressly - asserted the "leading role" of The Party. The party determined policy and government ministers (who were very often also people with senior party positions) carried it out. It therefore represented a major promotion when, in 1961, Wolfgang Rauchfuß became one of the 131 members of the Party Central Committee (which controlled the party). He also became a member of the National Legislature (''Volkskammer'') at this time. He then, in 1974, became in addition the Minister for Materials Economics and director of the Central Energy Commission in the Ministerial Council. As the collapse of the East German regime approached, on 7 November 1989 the government of Willi Stoph resigned, which for Rauchfuß involved resignation from his various government offices. Subsequently, however, he became a Secretary of State in the Modrow government. Between 8 November and 3 December 1989 he also served as a member of the Party Politburo and of the Central Committee Secretariat. Neues Deutschland 4 December 1989 In March 1990 he took a position with the Treuhand, the body mandated to privatize the East German industrial and commercial sectors as part of the reunification process. He also worked, for a period, for the "East German Investment Trust".

Awards and honours

* 1971

Banner of Labor The Banner of Labor () was an order issued in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It was given for "excellent and long-standing service in strengthening and consolidating the GDR, especially for achieving outstanding results for the national e ...

* 1979 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold * 1981 Patriotic Order of Merit Gold clasp

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rauchfuss, Wolfgang 1931 births 2005 deaths People from Chemnitz Members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany Deputy prime ministers of East Germany Government ministers of East Germany Members of the 5th Volkskammer Members of the 6th Volkskammer Members of the 7th Volkskammer Members of the 8th Volkskammer Members of the 9th Volkskammer Free German Youth members Recipients of the Patriotic Order of Merit (honor clasp) Recipients of the Banner of Labor