People of the Revolution and the USSR
- Konrad Adenauer Konrad Adenauer The chancellor who made provisional statehood durable
- Andreas Hermes Andreas Hermes Weimar finance minister who founded the CDU in the Soviet zone in 1945 and was deposed for opposing the land reform
- Otto Nuschke Otto Nuschke Kaiser’s successor at the head of the East German CDU, who brought it into line with the SED as deputy prime minister
- Jakob Kaiser Jakob Kaiser Christian Democrat who led the CDU in the Soviet zone until SMAD removed him, then became West Germany’s minister for all-German affairs
- Ernst Reuter Ernst Reuter The social democrat who became the voice of divided Berlin
- Otto Grotewohl Otto Grotewohl The Social Democrat who led a divided state into being
- Fritz Selbmann Fritz Selbmann East German heavy-industry minister who faced the striking workers outside the House of Ministries on 16 June 1953
- Fred Oelßner Fred Oelßner Economist and the SED’s chief ideologue until 1958, when he was expelled from the Politburo in the Schirdewan affair
- Bruno Leuschner Bruno Leuschner East German planner who ran planning in the German Economic Commission and then chaired the State Planning Commission
- Willy None Brandt Willy Brandt A social democrat who made reconciliation a politics of divided cities
- Helmut Josef Michael Kohl Helmut Kohl The chancellor who seized the initiative on the German question with a ten-point unification plan days before Malta