100 Notable alumni of Free University of Berlin

Teresa Maria Bücker is a German journalist, author and blogger. She writes from a feminist perspective on contemporary socio-political issues. From 2017 to 2019, she was editor-in-chief of the online magazine Edition F.

Frank Steffel is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU).

Hermann-Josef Tenhagen is the editor-in-chief and CEO of Finanztip since 2014, Finanztip is a non-for-profit financial information website for consumers, used c. 5 million times a month, running a weekly newsletter with a circulation of more than 1.000.000 and a popular YouTube channel. Finanztip is owned by the non-for-profit Finanztip foundation.

Oskar Michael Hans Karl Prinz von Preussen is a member of the House of Hohenzollern, the former ruling house of Germany.

Andrea Fischer is a former member of the German Bundestag for the German Green Party and from 1998 until 2001 was Federal Minister for Health. She dropped out of the Bundestag in 2002.

Andreas Umland is a German political scientist studying contemporary Russian and Ukrainian history as well as regime transitions. He has published on the post-Soviet extreme right, municipal decentralization, European fascism, post-communist higher education, East European geopolitics, Ukrainian and Russian nationalism, the Donbas and Crimea conflicts, as well as the neighborhood and enlargement policies of the European Union. He is a...

Hans Joas is a German sociologist and social theorist.

Will McBride was an American photographer in reportage, art photography and book illustration as well as a painter and sculptor.

Heike B. Görtemaker is a German historian known mostly for her biographies of Margret Boveri, German journalist and writer of the post-World War II period, and Eva Braun, the partner and wife of Adolf Hitler.

Muhō Nölke is a German-born Zen monk who was the abbot of Antai-ji, a Japanese Sōtō Zen temple in Shin'onsen in the Mikata District of Japan's Hyōgo Prefecture from 2002 until 2020. He has translated works of Dōgen and Kōdō Sawaki, and has authored six books in German and sixteen books in Japanese.

Sten Nadolny is a German novelist. His parents, Burkhard and Isabella Nadolny, were also writers.

Hans-Jürgen Papier is a German scholar of constitutional law who served as president of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany from 2002 to 2010.

Alexander Sabino Argüelles is an American linguist notable for his work on the Korean language. An avid language learner, he was profiled in Michael Erard's Babel No More. He is one of the polyglots listed in Kenneth Hyltenstam 's Advanced Proficiency and Exceptional Ability in Second Languages, and has been described by The New Yorker as "a legendary figure in...

Reem Alabali Radovan is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as the Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development in the government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz since May 2025.

Olga Grjasnowa is a German writer currently living in Berlin, Germany.

Heinrich Lummer was a German politician and member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Rahel Jaeggi is a Swiss professor of practical philosophy and social philosophy at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research areas are in social philosophy, political philosophy, ethics, philosophical anthropology, social ontology, and critical theory. Since February 2018 she has been the head of the Berlin campus of the newly founded International Center for Humanities and Social Change. In 2025...

Frank Bsirske is a German trade unionist and politician of Alliance 90/The Greens who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag since 2021. From 2001 to 2019, he was the chairman of the United Services Trade Union (ver.di).

Parag Khanna is an Indian-born strategy advisor and author. He is Founder & CEO of AlphaGeo, an AI based geospatial predictive analytics platform.

Peter Rudolf Neumann is a German journalist and academic who frequently appears on radio and television as an expert on terrorism and political violence. He is the Founding Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence as well as Professor of Security Studies at the War Studies Department of King's College London.

Heiner Flassbeck is a German economist and public intellectual. From 1998 to 1999 he was a State Secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Finance (German: Bundesministerium der Finanzen) where he also advised former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine on a reform of the European Monetary System. He became the Chief of Macroeconomics and Development of the United Nations Conference on...

Hajo Seppelt is a German journalist and author.

Jens-Daniel Herzog is a German stage director for play and opera, and a theatre manager.

Rupert Scholz is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union.

Reinhard Alfred Furrer was a German physicist and astronaut.

Gunnar Heinsohn was a German author, sociologist and economist and professor emeritus at the University of Bremen where he had a chair in social pedagogy from 1984.

Erik Spiekermann is a German typographer, designer and writer. He is an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen and ArtCenter College of Design.

Ramona Pop is a Romanian-born German politician of the Alliance '90/The Greens party who has been serving as chairwoman of the Federation of German Consumer Organisations (VZBV) since 2022. She previously served as a deputy mayor of Berlin and Senator for Economy, Energy, and Enterprises (Senatorin für Wirtschaft, Energie und Betriebe) from 2016 until 2021.

Lea Rosh is a German television journalist, publicist, entrepreneur and political activist. Rosh was the first female journalist to manage a public broadcasting service in Germany and in the 1970s the first anchorwoman of Kennzeichen D, a major political television program. She has been a member of the SPD since 1968.

Jutta Limbach was a German jurist and politician. She was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and served as President of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany from 1994 to 2002, the first woman in this office.

Sibylle Lewitscharoff was a German author. She first wrote in her spare time as a bookkeeper, quitting after her first novel, Pong, appeared in 1998. Pong was successful with critics and the public, earning her the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. It was followed by Consummatus (2006), Apostoloff (2009) and Blumenberg (2011). She received several German literary awards, including the Georg Büchner...

Maryam Palizban is an Iranian film and stage actress. She graduated in performing arts and theatre studies at Tehran University-Faculty of fine arts in 2004 and got her Ph.D. degree at the Free University Berlin, Germany in 2014.

Walter Momper is a German politician of the SPD (Social Democrats) and former Governing Mayor of Berlin (West Berlin 1989–1990, reunited Berlin 1990–1991). Whilst Governing Mayor, he served as President of the Bundesrat in 1989/90. He was at the opening of the Brandenburg Gate on 22 December 1989 and, on 3 October 1990, became the first mayor of a reunited...

Susan Neiman is an American moral philosopher, cultural commentator, and essayist. She has written extensively on the juncture between Enlightenment moral philosophy, metaphysics, and politics, both for scholarly audiences and the general public. She lives in Germany, where she is the Director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam.

Karl Schlögel is a noted German historian of Eastern Europe who specialises in modern Russia, the history of Stalinism, the Russian diaspora and dissident movements, Eastern European cultural history and theoretical problems of historical narration.

Chin Jung-kwon is a South Korean aesthetician, critic, and professor.

Steffen Möller is a German teacher, actor, satirist and stand-up artist, living and performing in Poland and Germany. Known there from the Europa da się lubić TV show and the M jak miłość soap opera (as Stefan Müller). He was also the host for the first season (running from September 2005 to December of the same year) of the Polish...

Wolfgang Becker was a German film director and screenwriter, best known to international audiences for his work Good Bye, Lenin! (2003). He was a co-founder of the production company X Filme Creative Pool, which produced his first successful feature film, Das Leben ist eine Baustelle, in 1997.

Manfred Stolpe was a German canonist, theologian and politician who served as Federal Minister of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs of Germany from 2002 until 2005. Before, he was Ministerpräsident of the state Brandenburg from 1990 until 2002. Stolpe was, after the state elections following German reunification, the only Social Democratic Minister-President of a state of former East Germany. Stolpe...

Bettina Jarasch is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens who served as Deputy Mayor and Senator for Environment, Mobility, Consumer and Climate Protection in the Berlin state government from December 2021 to April 2023. She has been a member of the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin from 2016 to 2021 and again since 2023, as well as leader of the Berlin...

Michael Wolffsohn is a German historian.

Fritz Teufel was a prominent figure in the West German political left of the 1960s. One of the founders of Kommune 1, Teufel cultivated a theatrical, humorous public image—encapsulated in his idea of the "Spaßguerilla" ("fun guerrilla"). In the 1970s he rejected this image and became involved with the violent Movement 2 June. He was jailed several times in the...

Ernest Ezra Mandel, also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter, was a Belgian Marxian economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist, and Holocaust survivor. He fought in the underground resistance against the Nazis during the occupation of Belgium.

Edzard Hans Wilhelm Reuter was a German businessman. He was the CEO of Daimler-Benz from 1987 to 1995.

Rüdiger Safranski is a German philosopher and author.

Seyran Ateş is a German lawyer and a Muslim feminist. She founded the Ibn Ruschd-Goethe mosque in 2017, as Germany's first liberal place of worship for Muslims. Ateş is best known for challenging conventional ideas in Islamic teaching by opening a mosque in Berlin which breaks with traditionalist precepts of what being a Muslim means.

Katharina Wagner is a German opera stage director and is the director of the Bayreuth Festival. She is the daughter of Wolfgang Wagner and Gudrun Wagner (née Armann), great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner, and great-great granddaughter of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt.

Gesine Schwan is a German political science professor and member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The party has nominated her twice as a candidate for the federal presidential elections. On 23 May 2004, she was defeated by the Christian Democrat Horst Köhler. On 23 May 2009, Köhler beat her again to win his second term.

Ines Schwerdtner is a German journalist and politician. She has been co-leader of The Left since October 2024. She was previously editor-in-chief of the German-language edition of the socialist magazine Jacobin from 2019 to 2023. She joined The Left in August 2023 and ran for the 2024 European Parliament election, but was not elected. In the 2025 federal election her...

Benjamin List is a German chemist who is one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and professor of organic chemistry at the University of Cologne. He co-developed organocatalysis, a method of accelerating chemical reactions and making them more efficient. He shared the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David MacMillan "for the development of asymmetric...

Götz Haydar Aly is a German journalist, historian and political scientist.

Ariadne von Schirach is a German philosopher, writer, journalist and critic. She is known as a literary critic for Deutschlandradio Kultur, and as an essayist and columnist for newspapers such as Die Welt and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Michael Andreas Lüders is a German political scientist and Islamic scholar who works as a publicist and political and economic consultant. He is also known as a journalist and a writer of many novels.

Martin Schirdewan is a German journalist and politician who served as co-chairman of The Left from June 2022 to October 2024. He has sat as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2017, and was elected co-chair of The Left in the European Parliament (GUE/NGL) parliamentary group in 2019.

Theresa Reintke is a German politician who has been serving as a member of the European Parliament from Germany since 2014. She is co-president of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament. She is a member of the Alliance 90/The Greens, part of The Greens–European Free Alliance. From 2011 to 2013 she was the spokesperson of the Federation of Young...

Anja Knauer is a German actress who has played the leading female role in some German films.

Franziska Maria "Ska" Keller is a German politician and was member of the European Parliament for the Germany constituency from 2009 to 2024. She is a member of the Alliance 90/The Greens, part of the European Green Party.

Inga Humpe is a German singer, songwriter and producer. She performed with Neue Deutsche Welle bands such as Neonbabies, DÖF and Humpe & Humpe. Her sister is the singer and producer Annette Humpe, with whom she performed regularly during her career. The song "Riding into Blue (Cowboy Song)" produced by Trevor Horn became a minor hit in 1990. Later that...

Frederik Pleitgen is a German journalist and correspondent for CNN International.

Lothar Heinz Wieler is a German veterinarian and microbiologist who served as president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) from 2015 to 2023. In this capacity, he advised the German Federal and State Governments on topics of public health, especially infection hazards, and on the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Emma Smetana is a Czech actress, singer, television presenter, journalist and political scientist.

John Adam Tooze is an English-American historian who is a professor at Columbia University, Director of the European Institute and nonresident scholar at Carnegie Europe. Previously, he was Reader in Twentieth-Century History at the University of Cambridge and Gurnee Hart Fellow in History at Jesus College, Cambridge.

Shoucheng Zhang was a Chinese-American physicist who was the JG Jackson and CJ Wood professor of physics at Stanford University. He was a condensed matter theorist known for his work on topological insulators, the quantum Hall effect, the quantum spin Hall effect, spintronics, and high-temperature superconductivity. According to the National Academy of Sciences:

Jakob Augstein is a German journalist, publisher and heir. He is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Der Freitag and also one of the main owners of Der Spiegel and the Spiegel publishing company, that were founded by his father Rudolf Augstein.

Klaus Wowereit is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and was the Governing Mayor of Berlin from 21 October 2001 to 11 December 2014. In 2001 state elections his party won a plurality of the votes, 29.7%. He served as President of the Bundesrat (the fourth highest office in Germany) in 2001/02. His SPD-led coalition was re-elected...

Elisabeth "Lisa" Paus is a German politician who served as the Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth from 2022 to 2025. A member of Alliance 90/The Greens and an economist by training, she has served as a Member of the German Bundestag for the state of Berlin since 2009.

Bernd Lucke is a German economist, professor, author and former politician. He co-founded the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in 2013 and served as the party's federal chairman until July 2015, when he was displaced and left the party soon after. He had been elected a member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the AfD in 2014 and served the five-year...

Hendrik Streeck is a German researcher of human immunodeficiency virus, epidemiologist and clinical trialist. He is professor of virology and the director of the Institute of Virology and HIV Research at the University Bonn.

Tim Bendzko is a German singer-songwriter. He achieved nationwide recognition with his song "Nur noch kurz die Welt retten" and becoming the winner of the 2011 Bundesvision Song Contest.

Marc-Uwe Kling is a German songwriter, author, and Kabarett (political stand-up comedy) artist. He studied philosophy and drama at Freie Universität Berlin.

Dieter Karl Cäsar Wedel known as Dieter Wedel was a German director.

Annalena Charlotte Alma Baerbock is a German diplomat and politician of the Alliance 90/The Greens party. She served as Germany's minister for foreign affairs from 2021 to 2025. She has served as President of the United Nations General Assembly during its 80th session since 9 September 2025.

Kevin Kühnert is a German politician of Social Democratic Party (SPD) who served as member of the Bundestag from 2021 to 2025, representing Berlin-Tempelhof-Schöneberg. He was General Secretary of the SPD from December 2021 to October 2024. From November 2017 to January 2021, Kühnert was the federal chairman of the Jusos (the youth organization of the SPD), previously serving as...

Attila Klaus-Peter Hildmann is a German vegan cookbook author and far-right conspiracy theorist. He wrote his first cookbook in 2009, and his book Vegan for Fun was named cookbook of the year by the Vegetarierbund Deutschland in 2012. He subsequently featured in numerous television programs and talk shows.

Jonathan Earl Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel The Corrections drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, earned a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His novel Freedom (2010) garnered similar praise and led to an appearance on...

Alfred Willi Rudolf Dutschke was a German sociologist and political activist who, until severely injured by an assassin in 1968, was a leading charismatic figure within the Socialist Students Union (SDS) in West Germany, and that country's broader "extra-parliamentary opposition" (APO).

Jan Vetter, better known as Farin Urlaub (from the German Fahr in Urlaub!, "Go on holiday!"), is a German singer, guitarist and songwriter. He is best known as the guitarist/vocalist for punk rock band Die Ärzte. He has also been a solo artist since 2001, touring with his band, the Farin Urlaub Racing Team. His releases starting in 2006 are...

Anne Will is a German television journalist and host of the eponymous political talk show. She was anchorwoman of the daily Tagesthemen news broadcast on ARD from 2001 until 2007.

Eckart Axel von Hirschhausen is a German physician, talk show host, comedian, author, and journalist.

Kohei Saito is a Japanese philosopher. He is an associate professor at the University of Tokyo. Saito works on ecology and political economy from a Marxist perspective. His 2020 book Capital in the Anthropocene has been credited for inspiring a resurgence of interest in Marxist thought in Japan.

Franziska Giffey is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who is serving as Berlin State Senator for Economy, Energy and Enterprise since 2023. She served as Governing Mayor of Berlin from December 2021 to April 2023. As of 2025, she is the youngest living (sitting or former) head of a german state government. She previously served as...

Michael Grätzel is a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne where he directs the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces. He pioneered research on energy and electron transfer reactions in mesoscopic-materials and their optoelectronic applications. He co-invented with Brian O'Regan the Grätzel cell in 1988. Grätzel has been called the "father of artificial photosynthesis".

Julius Richard Petri was a German microbiologist who is generally credited with inventing the device known as the Petri dish, which is named after him, while working as assistant to bacteriologist Robert Koch.

Sascha Lobo is a German blogger, writer, journalist, Audiobook-narrator and copywriter. Lobo's work is primarily concerned with the Internet and with the social effects of new technology.

Judith Schalansky is a German writer, book designer and publisher.

Alexander S. Kekulé is a German physician and biochemist. Since 1999 he has held the chair for Medical Microbiology and Virology of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and Director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology of the Universitätsklinikum Halle (University Hospital Halle).

Elke Heidenreich is a German author, TV presenter, literary critic and journalist. She has written audio plays, a magazine column, scripts for television plays and books. Heidenreich is known as the Kabarettist who created a character, Else Stratmann. She is a literary critic in the television Literaturclub of the Schweizer Fernsehen.

Otto Georg Schily is a former Federal Minister of the Interior of Germany, his tenure was from 1998 to 2005, in the cabinet of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and was a founding member of the West-German Green Party.

Hans-Christian Ströbele was a German politician and lawyer. He was a member of Alliance 90/The Greens, the German green party.

Herta Däubler-Gmelin is a German lawyer, academic and politician of the Social Democratic Party. She served as Federal Minister of Justice from 1998 to 2002, and as a Member of the Bundestag from 1972 to 2009. She currently teaches as an honorary professor of political science at the Free University of Berlin, particularly on international relations and human rights, and...

Arnulf Martin Baring was a German lawyer, journalist, political scientist, contemporary historian and author. He was a member of the German-British Baring family of bankers.

Heinrich August Winkler is a German historian.

Joachim Clemens Fest was a German historian, journalist, critic and editor who was best known for his writings and public commentary on Nazi Germany, including a biography of Adolf Hitler and books about Albert Speer and German resistance to Nazism. He was a leading figure in the debate among German historians about the Nazi era.

Bernhard Schlink is a German lawyer, academic, and novelist. He is best known for his novel The Reader, which was first published in 1995 and became an international bestseller. He won the 2014 Park Kyong-ni Prize.

Robert Gernhardt was a German writer, painter, graphic artist and poet.

Moritz Schularick [shoo-LAH-rick] is a German economist who has been serving as President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy since 2023.

Delphine O is a French politician and a former member of the French National Assembly, who represented Paris. She is the Secretary General of the Generation Equality Forum 2021.

Lisa Eckhart is an Austrian poetry slammer, comedian, and cabaret artist.

Anna Funder is an Australian author. She is the author of Stasiland, All That I Am, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life and the novella The Girl With the Dogs.