Georg von Rauch was a Baltic German

Baltic German

The Baltic Germans were mostly ethnically German inhabitants of the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, which today form the countries of Estonia and Latvia. The Baltic German population never made up more than 10% of the total. They formed the social, commercial, political and cultural élite in...

 historian specializing in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 and the Baltic states

Baltic states

The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...

.

Rauch was born in Pskov

Pskov

Pskov is an ancient city and the administrative center of Pskov Oblast, Russia, located in the northwest of Russia about east from the Estonian border, on the Velikaya River. Population: -Early history:...

, the son of Kornelius von Rauch, who was serving in the Russian army; in 1911 the family moved to Sangaste in southern Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

, then part of the Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

. Rauch graduated from the University of Tartu

University of Tartu

The University of Tartu is a classical university in the city of Tartu, Estonia. University of Tartu is the national university of Estonia; it is the biggest and highest-ranked university in Estonia...

 with a degree in history in 1927, leaving for Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 in 1939. He joined the staff of the University of Marburg, where he taught Russian history, in 1946, becoming a professor in 1953. In 1958 he accepted an offer from the University of Kiel

University of Kiel

The University of Kiel is a university in the city of Kiel, Germany. It was founded in 1665 as the Academia Holsatorum Chiloniensis by Christian Albert, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and has approximately 23,000 students today...

, where he became head of the Institute on East European History. His pioneering history of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 was translated into other languages and became a standard textbook.

His son was the anarchist Georg von Rauch

Georg von Rauch

Georg von Rauch was a member of the left-radical Blues-Scene in West-Berlin at the end of the 1960s during the German student movement.-Early life:...

, killed by the police in 1971.

Works

• Geschichte des bolschewistischen Russland (Wiesbaden: Rheinische Verlags-Anstalt, 1955); tr. as A history of Soviet Russia (New York: Praeger, 1957; rev. edd. 1958, 1962, 1964, 1967, 1972).

• Die Geschichte der baltischen Staaten (München: Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990); tr. as The Baltic States: The Years of Independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, 1917-1940 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995).