Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck was a German communist politician who served as the chairman of the Socialist Unity Party from 1946 to 1950 and as president of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1960.
Ernst Torgler was the last chairman of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) faction in the German Reichstag before he worked for the Nazis.
Ernst Goldenbaum was an East German politician.
Siegfried Rädel was a German politician, a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and a resistance fighter against the Nazi régime.
Waldemar Verner was chief of the People's Navy (Volksmarine) of the National People's Army of the German Democratic Republic and brother of Paul Verner.
Gustav Ernst Hans Jendretzky was a German Communist politician. He was a prominent politician of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the German Democratic Republic.
Ernst Achenbach was a German lawyer, diplomat and politician of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), who served as a member of the Bundestag (1957–1976), as a Member of the European Parliament (1964–1977), as Vice Chairman of FDP (1971–1972) and as Vice President of the Liberal group in the European Parliament.
Ilse Thiele was an East German politician. She was a member of the powerful Central Committee of the country's ruling SED (party) between 1954 and 1989. She served as the Chair of the national Democratic Women's League from 1953 till 1989.
Gustav Siemon was a German politician. At a national level he was a member of the East German National legislature (Volkskammer). Regionally, he led the National Democratic Party (NPDP) in Mecklenburg.
Emmi Handke was a German Communist party activist.
William Borm was a German politician, of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). He was a member of the Bundestag from 1965 to 1972, and a member of the FDP National Executive Committee from 1960 to 1982. Several years after his death, it was revealed that since the late 1950s he had been an agent of the Stasi, the State Security Service of the German Democratic Republic.
Käthe Dahlem was a German political activist who, after being forced into exile, became an anti-fascist Resistance activist, participating in the Spanish Civil War and, subsequently, again based in France. After 1945 she became a public official in the Soviet occupation zone. She was retired on health grounds in July 1949 and was subsequently caught up in her husband's difficulties with the ruling party, the party first secretary, Walter Ulbricht and other leading party comrades who had spent the war years in Moscow. By the 1960s, however, the authorities were happy to honour her pre-war and wartime contribution.
Helga Mucke-Wittbrodt was a German physician. For nearly forty years she was the medical director at the East German Government Hospital. In connection with this, for forty years she was a member of the National legislature ("Volkskammer"), representing not a political party but the Democratic Women's League . Although her medical abilities were evidently well attested, the length of her tenure at the hospital and the number of national honours that she accumulated over the years indicate that she was also highly prized by the authorities for her discretion and "political reliability".
Ernst Wulf (1921-1979) was an East German farmer and political activist who served as chairman of the Peasants Mutual Aid Association, a mass organization within the National Front, from 1964 to 1979.
Werner Laux was a German painter, university teacher and arts official. He was something of a party stalwart: between 1952 and 1956 he served as rector (head) of the Arts Academy at Berlin-Weissensee.
Ilse Rodenberg was a Hamburg typist who became an actress and, later, an influential East German theatre director. She combined this with a political career, sitting as a member of the East German parliament ("Volkskammer") for four decades between 1950 and 1990. She was a member not of the ruling SED (party) but of the National Democratic Party of Germany , one of the smaller Block Parties which contributed a semblance of pluralism to the country's political structure.
Fred Oelßner was a German communist politician, ecomomist and a leading political figure in the German Democratic Republic.
Hans Rietz was an East German politician who became a top official in the country's Democratic Farmers' Party , which was one of five so-called bloc parties controlled by the ruling Socialist Unity Party . For many years Rietz served as a member of the National parliament ("Volkskammer") and he was also a long-standing deputy chairman of the State Council.
Elli Schmidt was a German communist political activist with links to Moscow, where as a young woman she spent most of the war years. She returned in 1945 to what later became the German Democratic Republic where she pursued a successful political career till her fall from grace: that came as part of a wider clear out of comrades critical of the national leadership in the aftermath of the 1953 uprising. She was formally rehabilitated on 29 July 1956, but never returned to mainstream politics.
Arnold Gohr was a German clerical worker who became a trades unionist and activist. After 1945 he entered mainstream politics in East Berlin. As the Soviet occupation zone evolved into a Soviet sponsored one-party dictatorship, he never joined the ruling party, remaining instead a leading "collaborationist" member of the eastern version of the Christian Democratic Union. He became a party chairman and served between 1948 and 1958 as "deputy lord mayor" of Berlin, a period during which the increasingly divided city's constitutional status and future were contentious and ambiguous on a number of different levels.
