German communists

Johann Knief (20 April 1880 – 6 April 1919) was a German teacher, editor, and politician from Bremen.

Gudrun Ensslin (German: [ˈɡuːdʁuːn ˈɛnsliːn]; 15 August 1940 – 18 October 1977) was a founder of the German urban guerilla group Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion, or RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang).

Rosa Luxemburg (also Rozalia Luxenburg; Polish: Róża Luksemburg; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist, anti-war activist, and revolutionary socialist of Polish-Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen.

Heinrich Brandler (3 July 1881 – 26 September 1967) was a German communist trade unionist, politician, revolutionary activist, and writer.

Berndt Andreas Baader (6 May 1943 – 18 October 1977) was one of the first leaders of the German left-wing militant organization Red Army Faction, also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group.

Ernst Thälmann (16 April 1886 – 18 August 1944) was the leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during much of the Weimar Republic.

Max Hoelz (14 October 1889 - 15 September 1933) was a German Communist, most known for his role as a 'Communist Bandit' in the Vogtland region.

Otto Rühle (23 October 1874 in Großschirma – 24 June 1943 in Mexico) was a German Marxist active in opposition to both the First and Second World Wars, and a founder along with Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring and others of the group and magazine Internationale, which posed a revolutionary internationalism against a world of warring states, and also the Spartacist League (Spartakusbund in German) in 1916.

Joseph Arnold Weydemeyer (February 2, 1818, Münster – August 26, 1866, St. Louis, Missouri) was a military officer in the Kingdom of Prussia and the United States, as well as a journalist, politician and Marxist revolutionary.

Willi Dickhut (born 29 April 1904 in Schalksmühle - died 8 May 1992 in Solingen) was a German communist and cofounder of the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany (Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands).

Jenny Laura Marx (26 September 1845 – 25 November 1911), better known as Laura Marx, was the second daughter of Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen.

Kurt Schlosser (18 October 1900 – 16 August 1944 in Dresden) was German cabinet-maker, climber, and an active Communist.

Friedrich (Fritz) Carl Heckert (born 28 March 1884 in Chemnitz, died 7 April 1936 in Moscow) was a German politician, co-founder of the Spartacus League and the Communist Party of Germany and a leading member of the Communist International (Comintern).

Julian Borchardt (1868–1932) was a socialist activist and participant in the Zimmerwald Left.

Hans Mayer (March 19, 1907 in Cologne – May 19, 2001 in Tübingen) was a German literary scholar.

Paul Levi (March 11, 1883 – February 9, 1930) was a German Communist and Social Democratic political leader.

Wilhelm Friedrich Wolff, nicknamed Lupus (21 June 1809 – 9 May 1864) was a German schoolmaster.

Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht (29 March 1826 – 7 August 1900) was a German social democrat and one of the principal founders of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (Bengali: বীরেন্দ্রনাথ চট্টোপাধ্যায়), alias Chatto, (1880 – 2 September 1937, Moscow), was a prominent Indian revolutionary who worked to overthrow the British Raj in India by using the force of arms as a tool.

Ruth Fischer (11 December 1895 – 13 March 1961) was a German Communist and a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918.

Detlev Peukert (September 20, 1950 in Gütersloh – May 17, 1990 in Hamburg) was a German historian, noted for his studies of the relationship between what he called the "spirit of science" and the Holocaust and in social history and the Weimar Republic.

Markus Johannes "Mischa" Wolf (19 January 1923 – 9 November 2006) was head of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung), the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (MfS, commonly known as the Stasi).

Wilhelm Zaisser (20 June 1893 – 3 March 1958) was a German communist politician and the first Minister for State Security of the German Democratic Republic (1950–1953).

Sevim Dağdelen (born 4 September 1975) is a German politician of Kurdish origin and a member of the Left Party (die Linkspartei).

Walter Bartel (* 15 September 1904 in Fürstenberg/Havel; † 16 January 1992 in Berlin) was a German communist resistance fighter, historian and university professor.

Richard Peter (10 May 1895 – 3 October 1977) was a German press photographer and photojournalist.

Paul Frölich (7 August 1884 – 16 March 1953) was a journalist and left wing political activist who was a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany and founder of the party's paper, Die Rote Fahne.

Rudolf Berthold Schlesinger (1909 – November 10, 1996) was a German American legal scholar known for his contributions to the study of comparative law, a discipline that examines the differences and similarities among the legal systems of nations.

Moses "Max" Beer (1864–1943) was an Austrian-born Marxist journalist, economist, and historian.

Winfried Kretschmann (born May 17, 1948) is a German politician of the Alliance '90/Greens.

Paul Mattick, Sr.

Gustav Landauer (7 April 1870 – 2 May 1919) was one of the leading theorists on anarchism in Germany in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

Anton Emil Hermann Saefkow (22 July 1903 in Berlin – 18 September 1944 in Brandenburg an der Havel, executed) was a German Communist and a resistance fighter against the National Socialist régime.

Wolf Kaiser (26 October 1916 – 22 October 1992) was a German theatre and film actor.

Gustav von Wangenheim (February 18, 1895 – August 5, 1975) was a German actor, screenwriter and director.

Adolf Cluss (July 14, 1825 – July 24, 1905) was a German-born American immigrant who became one of the most important architects in Washington, D.

Friedrich 'Fritz' Anneke (January 3, 1818, Dortmund, Prussia – December 6, 1872, Chicago, United States) was a German socialist and newspaper editor, owner, and reporter.

Herbert Sandberg (April 18, 1908 – March 18, 1991) was a German artist and caricaturist.

Cläre Jung (2 February 1892 – 25 March 1981) was a German journalist, writer and political activist.

Sophie Liebknecht (1884 - 1964) was a Russian-born German socialist and feminist.

Wolfgang Steinitz (28 February 1905 – 21 April 1967) was a German linguist and folklorist.

Karl Ibach (April 3, 1915 – May 3, 1990) was a German member of the resistance against the Third Reich and later, a writer and politician.

Willi Kreikemeyer (1894 – c. 1950) was a German labourer and a Communist.

Oskar Hoffmann (July 4, 1877 – February 3, 1953) was a German editor and politician.

Samuel Mitja Rapoport (27 November 1912 – 7 July 2004) was a Russian-born German physician, biochemist and communist functionary of East Germany.

Steffie Spira (2 June 1908 – 10 May 1995) was an Austrian-born German stage, film and television actress.

Elisabeth Furse (30 August 1910 – 14 October 2002) was a Communist activist, World War II resistance escape route organizer, London bistro proprietress, and an early member of the Association of Cinematograph and Television Technicians (ACCT).

Evelyn N. Anderson (1909–1977), was a journalist in the UK.

Paul Eltzbacher (18 February 1868 – 25 October 1928) was a Jewish German law professor.

Karl Schabrod (born 19 October 1900 in Perleberg; died 31 March 1981 in Düsseldorf) was a German communist politician.

Hilarius Gilges was one of the few black Germans born in the country before the First World War.

Werner Scholem (born December 29, 1895 in Berlin, d. July 17, 1940, Buchenwald) was a member of the German Reichstag in 1924-1928 and a leading member of the Communist Party of Germany.

Arthur Dietzsch (* October 2, 1901 in Pausa; † August 26, 1974 in Burgdorf (Hannover region), Germany was a German KZ trustee (Funktionshäftling) and Kapo as well as an inmate nurse (KZ-Häftlingspfleger) in Block 46 of KZ Buchenwald.

Christel Wegner (born November 16, 1947 in Hamburg) is a German Communist politician.

Johann Georg Eccarius (also known as John George Eccarius; 1818-1889) was a Thuringian tailor and labour activist.

Walter Kraemer (Krämer) (21 June 1892 in Siegen - 6 November 1941 in Goslar) was a German politician of the German Communist Party (KPD) and member of the resistance against Nazism.

Irmtraud Morgner, (22 August 1933 – 6 May 1990), was a German writer, best known for works of magical realism concerned predominantly with the role of gender in East German society.

Günther Krupkat (5 July 1905, Berlin – 14 April 1990, Berlin) was a German fiction writer, known as one of the leading science fiction writers of East Germany.

Alexander Schimmelfennig (July 20, 1824 – September 5, 1865) was a German soldier and political revolutionary; then he became a Union Army general in the American Civil War.

Stephan Born (birthname Simon Buttermilch; 28 December 1824 – 4 May 1898) was a German typesetter.

Arnold Angelus Schölzel (born October 21, 1947) is a German editor and former defector, currently the editor-in-chief of the far-left newspaper Junge Welt.

Karl Schapper (December 30, 1812 in Weinbach – April 28, 1870, London) was a German socialist and labour leader.

August Willich (November 19, 1810 – January 22, 1878), born Johann August Ernst von Willich, was a military officer in the Prussian Army and a leading early proponent of communism in Germany.

Franz Jacob (August 9, 1906 – September 18, 1944) was a German Resistance fighter against the National Socialists and a Communist politician.