Carl Orff was a German composer and music educator, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana (1937). The concepts of his Schulwerk were influential for children's music education.
Ilse Werner was a hugely popular Dutch-German actress, singer, and musical whistler.
Caterina Valente is a French-Italian multilingual singer, guitarist, dancer, and actress. Valente is a polyglot; she speaks six languages, and sings in eleven. While she is best known as a European performer, Valente also spent part of her career in the United States, where she performed alongside Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Perry Como, and Ella Fitzgerald, among others.
Wallis Bird is an Irish musician, living in Berlin since 2012. As of 2021, she has released six studio albums, including Architect in 2014 and Home in 2016.
An overview of the evolution of Jazz music in Germany reveals that the development of jazz in Germany and its public notice differ from the "motherland" of jazz, the US, in several respects.
Rosita Serrano was a Chilean singer who had her biggest success in Nazi Germany between the 1930s and the early 1940s. Because of her bell-like voice and pitch-perfect whistling she received the nickname Chilenische Nachtigall.
Ilse Schwidetzky was a German anthropologist. She was the daughter of Georg and Susanne Schwidetzky. Susanne Schwidetzky, who studied math at the University of Berlin around 1900, died in 1911 of tuberculosis. Georg Schwidetzky studied law and had a successful political career which ended with World War I. The family moved to Leipzig, where Georg Schwidetzky worked for Die Deutsche Bücherei, roughly equivalent to the Library of Congress. Ilse Schwidetzky had three siblings, Eva, Walter, and Georg. She is related to Oscar Schwidetzky, who invented the ace bandage and was the first non-MD admitted to the American Medical Association.
William McCreery Ramsey was an American-German jazz and pop singer, journalist and actor famous for his German-language hits. He returned to Germany a year after he had served compulsory military service with the U.S. Air Force there. Active as a singer of jazz and pop already as a soldier, he made a career in different fields of musical entertainment. He sang and recorded German schlager, also German-language cover versions of English hits, jazz and swing. He appeared in films and television series, and ran popular series on radio and television as presenter.
Helene Fischer is a German singer, dancer, entertainer, television presenter, and actress. Since her debut in 2005, she has won numerous awards, including 17 Echo awards, four "Die Krone der Volksmusik" awards and three Bambi awards. She has sold at least 15 million records. In June 2014, her multi-platinum 2013 album Farbenspiel became the most downloaded album ever by a German artist and is currently the sixth bestselling album of all time in Germany. Her signature song "Atemlos durch die Nacht" was the bestselling song in Germany in 2014. She has had the best-selling album of the year in Germany five times, in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018. She ranked No. 8 on Forbes' list of "The World's Highest-Paid Women In Music 2018", earning $US32 million. Fischer has been referred to as the "Queen of Schlager".
Paul Kuhn was a German jazz musician, band leader, singer and pianist. He was the band leader of the SFB Big Band, the orchestra of the Sender Freies Berlin, the TV-Station of West Berlin, part of ARD. He was the conductor of the German entry in the 1972 Eurovision Song Contest.
Yasmin Fahimi is a German trade unionist and politician who has been chairing the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) since 2022.
Katarina Barley is a German politician and lawyer who has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019, serving as one of its Vice-Presidents. She served as Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection in the fourth Cabinet of Angela Merkel. Prior to that, she had served as Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and, from 28 September 2017, as the acting Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, both until 14 March 2018.
Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann was a German folklorist, anthropologist and ethnologist. She was an academic teacher, from 1946 at the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin in East Berlin and from 1961 at the University of Marburg.
Hans Otto Jung was a German viticulturist, jazz musician and patron of music. In the 1940s, he played as a pianist in the Hotclub Combo which he cofounded with Emil Mangelsdorff and others. In 1987, he was a cofounder of the Rheingau Musik Festival. With his wife Ursula Jung, he sponsored cultural initiatives in the Rhein-Main region.
Janine Natalie Wißler, known professionally as Janine Wissler, is a German politician who has been co-chairwoman of The Left and member of the Bundestag for Hesse since 2021. Prior to that, she served as member of the Landtag of Hesse since 2008 and leader of the state parliamentary group since 2009, including as sole leader since 2014, as well as deputy leader of the federal party since 2014. She was one of The Left's lead candidates for the 2021 German federal election, alongside Dietmar Bartsch.
Julia Hülsmann is a German jazz pianist and composer. Her compositions are often based on literary works, especially poetry.
Sarah Straub, married name Anderl-Straub, is a German singer, songwriter, musician, and psychologist. From a family of musicians, she followed in the footsteps of her father Helmut, a conductor and instrument teacher. At the age of six, she began playing the piano, then from the age of eight she studied clarinet and saxophone. At the age of twelve, Straub wrote her first songs. She was educated at St. Bonaventura Gymnasium in Dillingen a.d. Donau, a diocesan high school in the Franciscan tradition. From there she continued her studies at the University of Regensburg, graduating with a bachelor's degree in Psychology in 2011, obtaining her doctorate in 2015 from the University of Ulm.
Tabea Rößner is a German journalist and politician of Alliance 90/The Greens who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag since 2009. In 2019, she unsuccessfully ran as the Green Party's candidate for Mayor of Mainz.
Sanae Abdi is a German-Moroccan lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as a Member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Cologne I since the 2021 federal election.
AFN Frankfurt was a radio station in Frankfurt, Germany, that was operational from 1945 to 2004. It was a part of the American Forces Network (AFN) broadcasting to US soldiers serving overseas, and long served as headquarters of AFN Europe. It was popular not just with soldiers, but also with a German "shadow audience", and was instrumental in introducing several American musical styles to German listeners.
