- Gerhard Schröder
"'"' (born April 7, 1944), German politician, was Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), he led a coalition government of the SPD and the Greens. Before becoming a full time politician, he was a successful lawyer, and before becoming Chancellor he was Minister-president of the German state of Lower Saxony. Following the 2005 federal election, which his party lost, …
- Peer Steinbrück
Peer Steinbrück is a German SPD politician. He currently serves as Minister of Finance in the cabinet of Angela Merkel. He was Minister President ("Ministerpräsident") of North Rhine-Westphalia from November 2002 to June 2005. On the state election on May 22 2005 Steinbrück failed to be reelected as Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia. His successor is Jürgen Rüttgers (CDU). From November 2005 he is finance minister of Germany and Vice chief of SPD
- Franz Müntefering
"'"' (born January 16, 1940) is a German politician and former chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Since November 22, 2005 he has served as Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs and Vice-Chancellor in the cabinet of Angela Merkel
- Hubertus Heil
Hubertus Heil is a German politician. He has been secretary general of the SPD since 2005. After receiving his Abitur in 1992 Heil first served his Zivildienst, then began studying sociology and political science at the University of Potsdam and the Distance University Hagen in 1995. From 1995 to 1997 Heil was executive director of the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Arbeitnehmerfragen", a leftist study group inside the SPD, representing the workers' wing of the party, …
- Sigmar Gabriel
Sigmar Gabriel (born September 12 1959 in Goslar) is a German politician (SPD). After Gerhard Glogowski resigned, Gabriel became Minister-President of Lower Saxony on December 15 1999 and served until March 4 2003. He now is Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in the cabinet of Angela Merkel.
- Klaus Wowereit
Klaus Wowereit (born October 1, 1953 in Berlin) is a German politician, member of the SPD (Social Democratic Party), and has been the mayor of Berlin since the 2001 state elections. He served as President of the Bundesrat in 2001/02. His SPD-led coalition was re-elected in the 2006 elections. He is also sometimes mentioned as a possible SPD candidate for the Chancellorship of Germany ("Kanzlerkandidat"), …
- Wolfgang Tiefensee
Wolfgang Tiefensee (born January 4, 1955 in Gera) is a German SPD politician. He has been the Federal Minister for Transport, Building and Urban Development in the Grand coalition cabinet led by Angela Merkel since November 22, 2005. Originally an electrical engineer, he turned to politics in 1989, during the democratization process of the German Democratic Republic. Tiefensee was elected mayor of Leipzig in 1998, and was re-elected with 67.1% of the vote in April 2005.
- Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt (born December 23, 1918) is a German Social Democratic politician. He was the Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982, as well as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting Foreign Minister.
- Gesine Schwan
Gesine Schwan is a German political science professor who was the unsuccessful Social Democratic candidate for President of Germany, being defeated by the Christian Democrat Horst Köhler on May 23, 2004. Schwan is currently president of the Viadrina European University in Frankfurt (Oder). She graduated from the bilingual Französisches Gymnasium (academic high school) in Berlin.
- Friedrich Ebert
Friedrich Ebert (February 4, 1871 - February 28, 1925) was a German politician (SPD), who served as Chancellor of Germany and its first president during the Weimar period. Born in Heidelberg as the son of a tailor, he himself was trained as a saddlemaker. He became involved in politics as a trade unionist and Social Democrat, and soon became a leader of the moderate "revisionist" wing of the Social Democratic Party, becoming Secretary-General in 1905, …
- Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg was a Jewish Polish-born Marxist political theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary. She was a theorist of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland, later becoming involved in the German SPD, followed by the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. She started the journal "Die Rote Fahne" (The Red Flag).
- Matthias Platzeck
Matthias Platzeck (born 29 December 1953) is a German politician. He has been Minister-President of Brandenburg since 2002 and party chairman of the SPD from November 2005 to April 2006.
- Jürgen Rüttgers
Jürgen Rüttgers is a German politician (CDU) and Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, widely known for his views on immigration and the famous phrase "Kinder statt Inder" ("children instead of Indians") which was a media interpretation of "Statt Inder an die Computer müssen unsere Kinder an die Computer" ("instead of Indians in front of computers, our children must be in front of computers"), …
- Gerhard Botz
Gerhard Botz (born September 15, 1955 in Rudolstadt) is a German politician and member of the SPD.
- Andrea Nahles
Andrea Maria Nahles is a German politician, a Bundestag representative for Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and past SPD Youth leader. She is known with in the party for criticizing Gerhard Schröder's Agenda 2010 and thus considered to belong to the SPD's left wing.
- Johannes Rau
Johannes Rau was a German politician of the SPD. He was the eighth President of the Federal Republic of Germany from July 1, 1999 until June 30, 2004 and prime minister of North Rhine Westfalia from 1978 to 1998.
- Wolfgang Thierse
Wolfgang Thierse is a German politician. He was born on October 22, 1943 in Breslau. He is a Roman Catholic, grew up in East Germany and studied German at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. Later, he worked for the east-german ministry for cultural affairs. In 1989, he joined the opposition movement Neues Forum and in 1990 the SPD. He was elected deputy chairman and subsequently became a member of the Bundestag. After the SPD's victory in the 1998 general elections, …
- Hans Eichel
Hans Eichel (born December 24, 1941), German politician (SPD), was Minister of Finance from 1999-2005.
- Sabine Bätzing
Sabine Bätzing is a German politician and member of the SPD. She is a member of the Bundestag since 2002 and, since 2005, the German federal government's commissioner on drug-related issues. On June 13, 2003 Bätzing married musician Sven Markus Hellinghausen.
- Volker Blumentritt
Volker Blumentritt (born June 16, 1946 in Jena) is a German politician and member of the SPD.
- Hans-Christian Ströbele
Hans-Christian Ströbele is a German politician and lawyer. He is a member of the German Green party. Born 7 June 1939 in Halle (Saale); married. Graduated from high school in Marl (Westfalen). Studied law in Heidelberg and at the Free University of Berlin. Has practiced law since 1969 in Berlin. He was a member of the "Socialist Lawyers' Collective" for ten years, and has defended political criminals for thirty years, including members of the terrorist Red Army Faction.
- Norbert Lammert
Dr. Norbert Lammert is a German politician (CDU). As of 2005, he is the President of the Bundestag, the German parliament. According to the German order of precedence, this makes him Germany's second-highest ranking official after President Horst Köhler. Following the 2005 federal elections, Lammert was elected by the Bundestag on October 18, 2005, to replace Wolfgang Thierse (SPD). Lammert received 564 of 607 votes cast, including most of the SPD's votes. He is a Catholic.
- Ludwig Stiegler
Ludwig Stiegler (born April 9 1944 in Parsberg) is a German politician. He has been deputy chairman of the SPD's group in the Bundestag since 2002. Stiegler studied law,sociology and political science in Bonn and Munich. He finished in 1976 with the second juridical "Staatsexamen" (Bar examination). Since that he has worked as a lawyer. In 1964 Stiegler joined the SPD.
- Petra Bierwirth
Petra Bierwirth (born November 13, 1960 in Dresden) is a German politician and member of the SPD.
- Michael Naumann
Dr. Michael Naumann (born 8 December 1941 in Kothen/Anhalt) is a German politician, publisher and journalist. He was the German minister of culture in 1998.
- Erhard Eppler
Erhard Eppler is a German Social Democratic politician and founder of the GTZ. On the 16th of October 1968, he replaced Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski as Minister of Economic Cooperation until the 17th of May 1974. In July 2007, he confirmed that until the end of the World War II he was a member of the NSDAP.
- Rudolf Scharping
Rudolf Scharping (December 2 1947 in Niederelbert) is a German politician (SPD). Scharping studied politics, sociology and law at the University of Bonn. He joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1966. He was Member of the Rhineland-Palatine Diet from 1975 to 1994. From 21 May 1991 to 15 October 1994 he was prime minister of the state. In 1994 he ran for chancellor against Helmut Kohl (CDU), lost, and became leader of the opposition.
- Heide Simonis
Heide Simonis (born July 4 1943 in Bonn as Heide Steinhardt) is a German politician. She is a member of the SPD. She was Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein from 1993 to 2005, the first woman to hold this post in Germany's history. On March 17 2005 Simonis failed to be reelected as Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein in 4 consecutive ballots by the Landtag (parliament) of Schleswig-Holstein.
- Sebastian Edathy
Sebastian Edathy is a German politician. Edathy was born in Hanover, the son of an immigrant from Kerala, India, and is a trained sociologist. He has been an SPD member of the German parliament (Bundestag) since 1998. He was a member of former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder's red-green coalition, and is now a member of chancellor Angela Merkel's grand coalition. Today, he is the chairman of the German-Indian group of members of parliament.
- Klaus Uwe Benneter
Klaus Uwe Benneter (born March 1, 1947 in Karlsruhe) is a German politician and member of the SPD. He is married and has one son.
- Karl Lauterbach
Karl Lauterbach is a German scientist and politician (SPD). He is professor of health economics and epidemiology at the University of Cologne. Lauterbach studied human medicine in Aachen,Düsseldorf and San Antonio(Texas). From 1989-1992 he was studying Health Policy and Management as well as epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
- Egon Bahr
Egon Karlheinz Bahr is a German former politician for the SPD. The former journalist created the "Ostpolitik" of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, for whom he served as Secretary of the Prime Minister's Office from 1969 until 1972. Between 1972 and 1990 he was an MP in the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany, and from 1972 until 1976 was also a Minister.
- Niels Annen
Niels Annen (born April 6, 1973 in Hamburg) is a German politician and member of the SPD.
- Ottmar Schreiner
Ottmar Schreiner is a German lawyer and left-wing politician.He is known as one of the leading leftists in his party SPD. After his Abitur he was a part-time soldier at the paratrooper battalion in Lebach.Schreiner studied law at the University of Saarbrücken,the Free University of Berlin and the University of Lausanne.
- Harald Ringstorff
Dr. Harald Ringstorff (born September 25 1939 in Wittenburg) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and minister-president of the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He has been heading a coalition government of SPD and PDS (now Left Party) from 1998 until 2006, and since then is heading a coalition between SPD and CDU. He is the current President of the German Bundesrat, serving for the term 2006/07.
- Günter Verheugen
Günter Verheugen is a German politician, currently serving as European Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry. He is also one of five vice-presidents of the 27-member Barroso Commission. Günter Verheugen was previously Commissioner for Enlargement in the Prodi Commission, presiding over the accession of ten new member states in 2004. Verheugen studied history, sociology and political science at the University of Cologne and at the University of Bonn.
- Gustav Heinemann
Gustav Walter Heinemann, <small>GCB</small> (July 23, 1899 - July 7, 1976) was a German politician. He was Minister of Interior Affairs from 1949 to 1950, Minister of Justice from 1966 to 1969 and President of Germany from 1969 to 1974. He was famous for being open-minded with respect to the student protests of 1968, and he tried to keep his office as down-to-earth as possible (e.g. when asked whether he loved Germany, he answered that he loved his wife).
- Garrelt Duin
Garrelt Duin (born on 2 April 1968 in Leer) is a German politician. He is member of the German Bundestag (Parliament) with the Social Democratic Party of Germany and chairman of the SPD in Lower Saxony.
- Peter Danckert
Peter Wilhelm Danckert (born July 8, 1940 in Berlin) is a German politician and member of the SPD.
- Lothar Binding
Lothar Binding (born April 1, 1950 in Sandershausen) is a German politician and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.