- Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker was an East German Communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1971 until 1989. After German re-unification, he first fled to the Soviet Union but was extradited by the new Russian government to Germany, where he was imprisoned and tried for high treason and crimes allegedly committed during the Cold War. However, as he was dying of cancer, he was released from prison. He died in exile in Chile about a year and a half later.
- Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ulbricht (June 30, 1893 - August 1, 1973) was a German communist statesman. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971, he held arguably the central role in the early development and establishment of German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
- Markus Wolf
Markus Johannes "Mischa" Wolf was head of the General Reconnaissance Administration, the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (MfS). He was the MfS's number two for 34 years, which spanned most of the Cold War.
- Egon Krenz
Egon Krenz (born 19 March, 1937) is a former German Communist politician, who briefly served as leader of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1989 before the end of Communist rule. Throughout his career, Krenz held a number of prominent positions in the Communist regime, but he is most remembered as the Communist leader during the fall of the Berlin Wall. After reunification he was sentenced to a six and a half year prison sentence
- Gregor Gysi
Gregor Gysi (born January 16, 1948) is a German politician of the Left Party. He was a key figure in the end of East German communist rule in 1989, and in the post-reunification Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Gysi's political career started in the then-ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) of East Germany, to which he was admitted in 1967. In 1971 he became a licensed attorney, and during the 1970s and 1980s defended several notable dissidents, including Rudolf Bahro, …
- Wolf Biermann
Karl Wolf Biermann (born 15 November 1936 in Hamburg) is a former East German dissident who works as a German Liedermacher (songwriter). Biermann's father, who worked in the Hamburg docks, was a member of the Communist resistance. In 1943 he was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp as a Jew who had sabotaged Nazi warships. Wolf Biermann was one of the few children of workers who attended the "Heinrich-Hertz-Gymnasium" (high school) in Hamburg.
- Margot Honecker
Margot Honecker née Feist is a German Communist politician who served as Minister for National Education in the German Democratic Republic from 1963 until 1989. She was married to Erich Honecker (1912-1994), the former leader of East Germany, and they had a daughter together named Sonja born in 1951. Margot Honecker has resided in Chile since 1993.
- Konrad Wolf
Konrad Wolf was an East German film director, son of Friedrich Wolf, brother of Markus Wolf. He and his family left Germany for Moscow when the Nazis took power in 1933, where Wolf came into intense contact with Soviet film. At age 10, he played a minor role in the film "Kämpfer", filmed among the German Communist emigrants in Moscow. At age 17 he joined the Red Army and he was among the first troops to reach Berlin in 1945.
- Willi Stoph
Willi Stoph (9 July 1914 - 13 April 1999) was an East German politician. He served as Prime Minister (Chairman of the Council of Ministers) of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1964 to 1973, and again from 1976 until 1989.
- Otto Grotewohl
Otto Grotewohl (March 11, 1894 - September 21 1964) was an East German politician. Grotewohl was born in Braunschweig. A leader of the Social Democratic Party in the Soviet Zone of Occupation after World War II, he led his party into a merger with the Communist Party led by Wilhelm Pieck in April 1946, forming the new Socialist Unity Party (SED). Grotewohl and Pieck had received the Eulenberg estate as a life gift from the Soviet Government for the merger.
- Kurt Maetzig
Kurt Maetzig is an East German film director. Maetzig started working in the movie business in the 1930s. During World War II, Maetzig was a member of the Illegal German Communist Party, fighting the Nazis. After the war he lived in the Soviet occupation zone and resumed working with film. He made his first motion picture in 1946.
- Marita Koch
Marita Koch (born February 18, 1957 in Wismar, East Germany) is a former sprint athlete.
- Günter Guillaume
Günter Guillaume, was an intelligence agent of East Germany's secret service, the Stasi. Guillaume emigrated with his wife, Christel to West Germany 1956 with orders to penetrate the West German political system and report on it. He rose through the hierarchy of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, eventually becoming a close aide to West German chancellor Willy Brandt.
- Kornelia Ender
Kornelia Ender (born October 25, 1958 in Bitterfeld) is an East German swimmer who at the 1976 Summer Olympics became the first woman swimmer to win four gold medals at a single Olympic Games, all in world record times. Ender trained from a young age and won her first Olympic medals as a 13-year-old at the 1972 Olympics in Munich: three silver medals, including one in the individual 200m medley, finishing behind Australia's Shane Gould.
- Günter Schabowski
Günter Schabowski was an official of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), the ruling party during most of the existence of the German Democratic Republic. Schabowski gained worldwide fame in November 1989 for accidentally beginning the destruction of the inner German border, including the Berlin Wall. Schabowski was born in Anklam, Pomerania (now part of the federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania).
- Sigmund Jähn
Sigmund Werner Paul Jähn was the first German cosmonaut. He was born in Morgenröthe-Rautenkranz, Vogtland, Germany. From 1943 to 1951 he attended school in his hometown, and after school trained as a printer. In 1955 he joined the East German air force (the Luftstreitkräfte der NVA) where he became a pilot and military scientist. From 1966-1970 he studied at the Gagarin Military Air Academy in Monino, in the Soviet Union, …
- Robert Havemann
Robert Havemann was a chemist, communist and an East German dissident. He studied chemistry in Berlin and Munich from 1929 to 1933, and then later received a doctorate in physical chemistry from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Havemann joined the German Communist Party in 1932 and worked for the resistance until his arrest by the Gestapo in 1943. He received a death sentence, but due to his knowledge he was instead forced to do research while in jail.
- Lothar de Maizière
Lothar de Maizière is a German conservative politician who served as the first and only democratically elected Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic in 1990, and as such was the last leader of an independent East Germany. He was born in Nordhausen and studied viola at the College of Music "Hanns Eisler" in East Berlin from 1959 to 1965.
- Rudolf Bahro
Rudolf Bahro (18 November 1935 - 5 December 1997) was born in 1935 in Bad Flinsberg (now in Poland). He joined the East German Socialist Unity Party in 1954 as a student of philosophy at the Berlin Humboldt University. From 1959-1960 he took part in the campaign to collectivise agriculture in the Oderbruch region; then, after a period as editor of a university paper at Greifswald he became an official of the Union of Scientific Employees in Berlin.
- Andreas Krieger
Andreas Krieger (born Heidi Krieger on 20 July 1966 in Berlin) is a former German shot putter, who competed as a woman in the East German athletics team. Like many prominent East German sportspeople at the time, Krieger was systematically doped with anabolic steroids. At the 1986 European Championships in Athletics, Krieger won the gold medal in the shot put event. In 1997 he underwent sex reassignment surgery and changed his name to Andreas.
- Horst Sindermann
Horst Sindermann (September 5, 1915 - April 20, 1990) was Chairman of the Council of Ministers of East Germany (GDR) from 1973 to 1976. Born in Dresden, he was a member of the Communist Party of Germany, and spent the Second World War imprisoned. After the war he was a newspaper editor and leader of the Chemnitz and Leipzig branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. He was a member of the Volkskammer from 1963 to 1969, and its president from 1976 to 1989.
- Johannes R. Becher
Johannes Robert Becher (b May 22 1891 in Munich; d October 11 1958 in Berlin) was a German politician and poet. Johannes R. Becher was the son of judge Heinrich Becher. In 1910 tried to commit suicide with a friend. Only Becher survived. He starting from 1911 he studied medicine and philosophy in Munich and Jena. He left his studies and became an expressionist writer, his first works appearing in 1913.
- Rainer Eppelmann
Rainer Eppelmann (born February 12, 1943 in Berlin), is a German politician. He's known for his opposition in the German Democratic Republic and is now a member of the CDU. Eppelmann was born to a national socialistic family. Being a member of the SS, his father served as a guard in the concentration camp of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. His mother was a member of the BDM and the NSDAP. After dropping out of school in West Berlin in 1961, …
- Irmtraud Morgner
Irmtraud Elfriede Morgner (August 22 1933 - May 6 1990) was an East German feminist writer. Her 1974 montage novel "Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz nach Zeugnissen ihrer Spielfrau Laura" has been translated into English, with the title "The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura: A Novel in Thirteen Books and Seven Intermezzos". Morgner was born in Chemnitz and died in Berlin.
- Matthias Sammer
Matthias Sammer (born September 5, 1967) is a former German football player who is now a coach. He played as a midfielder, and later in his career as a sweeper. He was named European Footballer of the Year in 1996, the year he led Germany to victory in the European Championship. Sammer retired with 74 total caps, 23 for East Germany and 51 for the unified side.
- Waldemar Cierpinski
Waldemar Cierpinski (born August 3, 1950) is a former East German athlete and two time Olympic Champion in the marathon.
- Petra Pau
Petra Pau (born 9 August 1963) is a member of the Left Party.PDS in the German parliament, the Bundestag. From 1998 - 2005 she was one of just two party representatives, having been directly elected as the representative of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, a working-class area of east Berlin. She used to be a leader of the East German pioneers and an art teacher.
- Katrin Krabbe
Katrin Krabbe (born 22 November 1969 in Neubrandenburg, Germany) is a female athlete who competed for East Germany (before 1990) and Germany thereafter. She represented the DDR at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. She was a successful track star, winning the 100 m and 200 m titles in the 1990 European Championships in Athletics (held in Split) and the same titles at the 1991 World Championships in Athletics (held in Tokyo, …
- Tamara Danz
Tamara Danz (14 December 1952 - 22 July 1996) was the lead singer and lyricist of the East German rock group Silly. She died at the age 43 of breast cancer.
- Renate Stecher
Renate Stecher is a German (former East German) athlete and a triple Olympic champion. Born as Renate Meißner, she was a very talented athlete, also competing in the high jump and pentathlon. She debuted internationally at the 1969 European Championships, where she - as a last minute substitute - won a silver medal in the 200 m and a gold in the 4 x 100 m relay.
- Walter Kempowski
Walter Kempowski (born April 29, 1929 in Rostock) is a German writer and archivist. Kempowski is chiefly known for his series of novels called "German Chronicle" ("Deutsche Chronik") and the monumental "Echolot" ("Sonar"), a collage of autobiographical reports, letters and other documents by contemporary witnesses of the Second World War.
- Olaf Ludwig
Olaf Ludwig (born April 13 1960 in Gera) is a former German racing cyclist. As an East German, he spent the majority of his career racing as an amateur until the reunification of Germany allowed him to become professional with the Dutch Panasonic cycling team, one of the leading teams at the time. As a specialist sprinter, perhaps the highlight of his career was winning the maillot vert (green jersey) in the 1990 Tour de France.
- Ulf Kirsten
Ulf Kirsten (born December 4, 1965 in Riesa, East Germany) is a former German football (soccer) striker, the first player in history to reach a total 100 caps playing with two different national teams. His biggest success was the win of the 1993 German Cup. His nickname was "der Schwatte".
- Evelyn Ashford
Evelyn Ashford (born April 15, 1957 in Shreveport, Louisiana) is an American athlete, the 1984 Olympic champion in the 100 m. Arguably the greatest female sprinter ever, with a career that spanned an unprecedented five Olympic Games. She has with automatic timing run under the 11 second barrier over 30 times and was the first to run under 11 seconds in an Olympic Games. As a 19-year-old, Ashford finished 5th in the 100 m event at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
- Grit Breuer
Grit Breuer (born February 16, 1972 in Robel, Germany) is a former East German athlete, who competed in the women's 200m, 400m, 4x100m, and 4x100m events. She has received injuries as a result of her sports competition, including a slipped disk in her back and a ligament in her knee. She has also been involved in drugs-related controversy. In 1992 she received a two year ban from the sport after admitting she had taken clenbuterol.
- Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler
Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler (April 28, 1918 - September 20, 2001) was an East German journalist, propagandist, and host of the television show "Der schwarze Kanal" (German: "The Black Channel") from March 21, 1960 to October 30, 1989. Born in Berlin and the son of a Prussian aristocrat, Schnitzler attended a boarding school at Bad Godesberg and studied medicine and business at Cologne university.
- Bärbel Bohley
Bärbel Bohley was an East German opposition figure and artist. In 1983 she was expelled from the GDR artists federation (VBK) and was banned from travelling abroad or exhibiting her work in East Germany. She was accused of having contacts to the West German Green Party. In 1985 she was one of the co-founders of the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights. In 1988 she was arrested during a demonstration and was given a six month visa to the United Kingdom.
- Thomas Doll
Thomas Doll (born 9 April 1966 in Malchin, Germany) is a former footballer and coach. He played as an attacking midfielder. Doll began his career with local side BSG Lokomotiv Malchin, before joining East German first-division DDR-Oberliga side Hansa Rostock. In 1986 he was moved to BFC Dynamo, the country's dominant, Stasi-supported club, where he won two titles, in 1987 in 1988.
- Bernd Stange
Bernd Stange is a German football manager. Stange started playing at an early age and was called into the East German youth team. He continued to play for Chemie Gnaschwitz in the lower divisions until 1965 and later a year at Vorwärts Bautzen before joining HSD DHfK Leipzig, playing until retiring in 1970. Stange went into coaching with FC Carl Zeiss Jena, winning the GDR league title twice in 1972 & 1975 and the GDR Cup in 1973 and 1974.
- Wilhelm Zaisser
Wilhelm Zaisser (June 20, 1893-March 3, 1958) was head of the East German Ministry for State Security or Stasi from 1950 to 1953. Born in Gelsenkirchen, Zaisser studied to become a teacher from 1910 to 1913 in Essen. When World War I began a year later, Zaisser entered the German Army. Upon leaving the service in 1918, Zaisser joined the USPD and in 1919 returned to Essen, where he became a school teacher.