100 Notable alumni of University of Munich

Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl was a German mathematician, theoretical physicist, logician and philosopher. Although much of his working life was spent in Zürich, Switzerland, and then Princeton, New Jersey, he is associated with the University of Göttingen tradition of mathematics, represented by Carl Friedrich Gauss, David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski.

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).

Gershom Scholem was an Israeli philosopher and historian. Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kabbalah, Scholem was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Valdas Adamkus is a Lithuanian politician, diplomat and civil engineer who served as the fifth and seventh president of Lithuania from 1998 to 2003 and again from 2004 to 2009.

Antanas Smetona was a Lithuanian intellectual, journalist, and politician. He served as the first president of Lithuania from 1919 to 1920 and later as the authoritarian head of state from 1926 until the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940. Referred to as the "Leader of the Nation" during his presidency, Smetona is recognised as one of the most important Lithuanian...

Benjamin Franklin Wedekind was a German playwright. His work, which often criticizes bourgeois attitudes (particularly towards sex), is considered to anticipate expressionism and was influential in the development of epic theatre.

Anja Reschke is a German journalist and television presenter.

Carl Spitzweg was a German romantic painter, especially of genre subjects. He is considered to be one of the most important artists of the Biedermeier era.

Marie Charlotte Carmichael Stopes was a British author, palaeobotanist and campaigner for eugenics and women's rights. She made significant contributions to plant palaeontology and coal classification, and was the first female academic on the faculty of the University of Manchester. With her second husband, Humphrey Verdon Roe, Stopes founded the first birth control clinic in Britain, which bore her name...

Margarethe von Trotta is a German film director, screenwriter, and actress. She has been referred to as a "leading force" of the New German Cinema movement. Von Trotta's extensive body of work has won awards internationally. She was married to and collaborated with director Volker Schlöndorff. Although they made a successful team, von Trotta felt she was seen as secondary...

Katharina Elisabeth Schulze is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens who has been serving as a member of the State Parliament of Bavaria (Landtag) since 2013. Along with Ludwig Hartmann, she was one of the two leading candidates of her party in the 2018 Bavarian state election. Since 2019, she has been part of her party's national leadership, under...

Edmund Josef von Horváth was an Austro-Hungarian playwright and novelist who wrote in German, and went by the nom de plume Ödön von Horváth ( German pronunciation: [ˈøːdœn fɔn ˈhɔʁvaːt]). He was one of the most critically admired writers of his generation prior to his untimely death. He enjoyed a series of successes on the stage with socially poignant and...

Hans-Jochen Vogel was a German lawyer and a politician for the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He served as Mayor of Munich from 1960 to 1972, winning the 1972 Summer Olympics for the city and Governing Mayor of West Berlin in 1981, the only German ever to lead two cities with a million+ inhabitants. He was Federal Minister of Regional Planning,...

Leonardo Boff is a Brazilian Catholic theologian, philosopher writer, and former Catholic priest known for his active support for Latin American liberation theology.

Ulrich Beck was a German sociologist, and one of the most cited social scientists in the world during his lifetime. His work focused on questions of uncontrollability, ignorance and uncertainty in the modern age, and he coined the terms "risk society" and "second modernity" or "reflexive modernization". He also tried to overturn national perspectives that predominated in sociological investigations with...

Gustav Ritter von Kahr was a German jurist and right-wing politician. During his career he was district president of Upper Bavaria, Bavarian minister president and, from September 1923 to February 1924, Bavarian state commissioner general with dictatorial powers. In that role he openly opposed the government of the Weimar Republic in several instances, including by ceasing to enforce the Law...

Karl Carstens was a German politician. He served as the president of West Germany from 1979 to 1984.

Theodora "Dora" Bakoyanni is a Greek politician. From 2006 to 2009 she was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, the highest position ever to have been held by a woman in the Cabinet of Greece at the time; she was also Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2009. Previously she was the Mayor of Athens...

Douglas Sirk was a German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. However, he also directed comedies, westerns, and war films. Sirk started his career in Germany as a stage and screen director, but he left for Hollywood in 1937 after his Jewish wife was persecuted by the Nazis.

Maike Kohl-Richter is best known as the second wife of the former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl from 2008 until his death in 2017. She is controversial in Germany for her right-wing anti-immigrant views and support for Viktor Orbán, and for her public feud with Kohl's children and grandchildren. She has been accused of hijacking the Kohl legacy and "has been...

Gustav Walter Heinemann was a German politician who was President of West Germany from 1969 to 1974. He served as mayor of Essen from 1946 to 1949, West German Minister of the Interior from 1949 to 1950, and Minister of Justice from 1966 to 1969.

Georgios Nikolaou Papanikolaou was a Greek physician, zoologist and microscopist who was a pioneer in cytopathology and early cancer detection, and inventor of the pap smear for detection of cervical cancer.

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.

Inaara Aga Khan is a German philanthropist. She was the second wife of Karim al-Husseini (Aga Khan IV), who served as the 49th Imam of the Nizari branch of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims; from May 1998 to March 2014, she held the title Begum Aga Khan.

Albrecht, Duke of Bavaria was the son of the last crown prince of Bavaria, Rupprecht, and his first wife, Duchess Marie Gabrielle in Bavaria. He was the only child from that marriage who reached adulthood. His paternal grandfather was Ludwig III of Bavaria, the last king of Bavaria, who was deposed in 1918.

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.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 13th Marquess of Groppoli, KCVO DL, better known as Lord Acton, was an English Catholic historian, Liberal politician, and writer. A strong advocate for individual liberty, Acton is best known for his observation on the dangers of concentrated authority. In an 1887 letter to an Anglican bishop, he famously wrote, 'Power tends to...

Franz Bonaventura Adalbert Maria Herzog von Bayern, commonly known by the courtesy title Duke of Bavaria, is the head of the House of Wittelsbach, the former ruling family of the Kingdom of Bavaria. His great-grandfather King Ludwig III was the last ruling monarch of Bavaria, being deposed in 1918.

Otto Sander was a German film, theater, and voice actor.

William Lane Craig is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author, and theologian. He is a professor emeritus of philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology of Biola University.

Lion Feuchtwanger was a German Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht.

Siegfried Rauch was a German film and television actor. In a career spanning over 60 years, he appeared in several international film productions and had leading roles in numerous German television productions.

Charlotte Link is a German writer. She is among the most successful contemporary authors writing in German.

Karl Ernst Haushofer was a German general, professor, geographer, and diplomat. Haushofer's concept of Geopolitik influenced the ideological development of Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess. During Hess and Hitler's incarceration by the Weimar Republic after the Beer Hall Putsch, Haushofer visited Landsberg Prison to teach and mentor both Hess and Hitler. Haushofer also coined the political use of the term...

Prince Wilhelm Friedrich Franz Joseph Christian Olaf of Prussia was the eldest child of Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, and Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. At his birth, he was second in line to the German throne and was expected to succeed to the throne after the deaths of his grandfather, Emperor Wilhelm II, and his father, Crown Prince Wilhelm, although both...

Roman Herzog was a German politician, judge and legal scholar, who served as President of Germany from 1994 to 1999. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he was the first president to be elected after German reunification. He previously served as a judge of the Federal Constitutional Court, and he was president of the court 1987–1994. Before his...

Heinrich Aloysius Maria Elisabeth Brüning was a German Centre Party politician and academic, who served as the chancellor of Germany during the Weimar Republic from 1930 to 1932.

John Stephen Piper is a Reformed Baptist theologian and retired pastor. Specializing in New Testament studies, he is chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Piper taught biblical studies at Bethel University for six years (1974–1980), before serving as pastor for preaching and vision of Bethlehem Baptist Church (Converge) in Minneapolis for 33 years (1980–2013).

Hans Fritz Scholl was, along with Alexander Schmorell, one of the two founding members of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. The principal author of the resistance movement's literature, he was found guilty of high treason for distributing anti-Nazi material and was executed by the Nazi regime in 1943 during World War II.

Peter Sloterdijk is a German philosopher and cultural theorist. He was a professor of philosophy and media theory at and Rector from 2001 to 2015 of the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe. He co-hosted the German television show Das Philosophische Quartett from 2002 until 2012.

Alexander Dobrindt is a German politician of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) who has been serving as the Federal Minister of the Interior in the government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz since 2025.

Giovanni di Lorenzo is a German-Italian journalist. He is editor-in-chief (since 2004) of German nationwide weekly newspaper Die Zeit and former editor-in-chief of Berlin's liberal daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel (1999–2004; has since retained the position of publisher). Additionally di Lorenzo is a prominent talk show host for the Radio Bremen show 3 nach 9 airing monthly on NDR.

Ottfried Fischer is a retired German actor and Kabarett artist best known for his role as Benno Berghammer in the popular German TV series Der Bulle von Tölz. He is a supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Theodor Heuss was a German liberal politician who served as the first president of West Germany from 1949 to 1959. His civil demeanour and his cordial nature – something of a contrast to German nationalist traditions and the stern character of chancellor Konrad Adenauer – largely contributed to the stabilization of democracy in West Germany during the Wirtschaftswunder years. Before...

Florian Munteanu is a German-Romanian actor. He is known for playing the boxer Viktor Drago in Creed II (2018) and Creed III (2023), and Razor Fist in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021).

Anton Gerhard "Toni" Hofreiter is a German politician who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag since the 2005 elections.

Max Ferdinand Scheler was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers, Scheler developed the philosophical method of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology.

Georg Gänswein is a German prelate of the Catholic Church who was named Apostolic Nuncio to Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia on 24 June 2024. He served as Prefect of the Papal Household from 2012 to 2023 and was the Personal Secretary of Pope Benedict XVI. He was a Professor of Canon Law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross...

Hubert Burda is a German billionaire publisher. He is the owner, publisher and general partner of Hubert Burda Media, a global media company of more than 600 media products, including websites, print magazines and other brands. It operates in 20 countries, predominantly in Germany and the UK. Its brands include Focus, Bunte and Radio Times.

Hans Albrecht Eduard Bethe was a German-American physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics and solid-state physics, and received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1967 for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. For most of his career, Bethe was a professor at Cornell University.

Sandra Maischberger is a German journalist, talk show host, and author.

Fereydoun Farrokhzad was an Iranian showman, host, poet, actor, political activist, singer, humanitarian, and writer. He is best known for his television variety show, The Silver Carnation, which introduced and featured many artists, such as Ebi, Leila Forouhar, Shohreh, Sattar, Hayedeh, and many more.

Otto Hahn was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the field of radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and discoverer of nuclear fission, the science behind nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered isotopes of the radioactive elements radium, thorium, protactinium and uranium. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic...

William Emmett Smith Jr. was an American actor and stunt performer. His career spanned nearly 80 years across film and television, often in imposing or villainous character roles.

Ludwig III was the last King of Bavaria, reigning from 1913 to 1918. Initially, he served in the Bavarian military as a lieutenant and went on to hold the rank of Oberleutnant during the Austro-Prussian War. He entered politics at the age of 18, as a member of the Bavarian parliament, and was a keen participant, supporting electoral reforms. Later...

Bartholomew is the current Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople since 1991. In accordance with his title, he is regarded as the primus inter pares (first among equals) in the Orthodox Church, and as a spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide.

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian–Swiss theoretical physicist and a pioneer of quantum mechanics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle". The discovery involved spin theory, which is the basis of a theory of the structure of matter.

Claudia Benedikta Roth is a German politician (Alliance 90/The Greens) and member of the Bundestag.

Ulrich "Uli" Hoeneß is a German football executive and former professional player who played as a forward. He played for West Germany at one World Cup and two European Championships, winning one tournament of each competition. During his playing career, he was primarily associated with Bayern Munich, where he won three Bundesliga titles and three European Cups.

Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht was a German economist, banker, politician, and co-founder of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank during the Weimar Republic. He was a fierce critic of his country's post-World War I reparations obligations. He was also central in helping create the group of German industrialists and landowners that...

Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German polymath whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known for his two-volume work The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering human history. Spengler's model of history postulates...

Günther Johannes Jauch is a German television presenter, television producer, and journalist, best known as the longtime host of Wer wird Millionär?, the German version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Franz Josef Strauss was a German politician. He was the long-time chairman of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) from 1961 until 1988, member of the federal cabinet in different positions between 1953 and 1969 and minister-president of Bavaria from 1978 until 1988. Strauss is also credited as a co-founder of European aerospace conglomerate Airbus.

Veronica Maria Cäcilia Ferres is a German actress. Her 2007 portrayal of Sara Bender in Die Frau vom Checkpoint Charlie, based on the true story of Jutta Fleck, earned her the award for Best Actress at the Deutscher Fernsehpreis (German Television Awards).

Ümit Özdağ is a Turkish politician who serves as the leader of the Victory Party since 2021.

Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Robert Schuman was a Luxembourg-born French statesman. Schuman was a Christian democratic (Popular Republican Movement) political thinker and activist. Twice Prime Minister of France, a reformist Minister of Finance and a Foreign Minister, he was instrumental in building postwar European and trans-Atlantic institutions and was one of the founders of the European Communities, the Council of Europe and...

Thomas Johannes Gottschalk is a German radio and television host and entertainer. He is best known for hosting Wetten, dass..?, for many years Europe's biggest television show, which he steered to huge success in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol between 1987 and 2023. Until 2015, he was also the brand ambassador in television advertisements for Haribo confectionery.

Maximilian Schell was a Swiss actor, theatre director, filmmaker, and musician of Austrian origin. He was one of the most internationally-acclaimed German-speaking actors of his generation, earning accolades for his work on both screen and stage. Born and initially raised in Vienna, where his parents were involved in the arts, he grew up surrounded by performance and literature. While he...

Sophia Magdalena Scholl was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active in the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany.

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was a German experimental physicist who produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays (known as Röntgen rays in many languages). In 1901, Röntgen became the first recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the remarkable rays subsequently named after...

Juliane Margaret Beate Koepcke, is a German-Peruvian mammalogist who specialises in bats. She is the daughter of German zoologists Maria and Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke.

Joseph John Campbell was an American writer and the husband of Jean Erdman. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human condition. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of...

Armin Laschet is a German politician who served as Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 27 June 2017 to 26 October 2021. He served as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 22 January 2021 to 31 January 2022. He was elected to the German Bundestag following the 2021 German federal election.

Pope Benedict XVI was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City from 2005 until his resignation in 2013. Following his resignation, he chose to be known as "pope emeritus", a title he held until his death on 31 December 2022.

Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist, one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics and a principal scientist in the German nuclear program during World War II.

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with...

Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusual talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. His film-making process involves avoiding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing his cast and crew into real situations mirroring those...

Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and,...

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was a German theoretical physicist. He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the services he rendered to the advancement of physics by his discovery of energy quanta".

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke, known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Prague-born, Bohemian poet who wrote in German. Acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language. His work is viewed by critics and scholars as possessing undertones of mysticism, exploring themes of subjective experience and disbelief....

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian and American actor, businessman, politician, and former professional bodybuilder, known for his roles in high-profile action films. He served as the 38th governor of California from 2003 to 2011.

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves proposed by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism.

Edmund Rüdiger Stoiber is a German politician who served as the 16th minister-president of the state of Bavaria between 1993 and 2007 and chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU) between 1999 and 2007. In 2002, he ran for the office of Chancellor of Germany in the federal election, and in one of the narrowest elections in German history lost...

Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was a German inventor and mechanical engineer, best known for inventing the diesel engine, which burns diesel fuel; both are named after him.

Paul Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized versions of German...

Ernst Simon Bloch was a German Marxist philosopher. Bloch was influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, as well as by apocalyptic and religious thinkers such as Thomas Müntzer, Paracelsus, and Jacob Böhme. He established friendships with György Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. Bloch's work focuses on an optimistic teleology of the...

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz FRS FRSE was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history.

Sir Muhammad Iqbal was an Islamic philosopher and poet. His poetry in Urdu is considered to be among the greatest of the 20th century, and his vision of a cultural and political ideal for the Muslims of British India is widely regarded as having animated the impulse for the Pakistan Movement. He is commonly referred to by the honorific Allamah...

Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano was a German philosopher and psychologist. His 1874 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, considered his magnum opus, is credited with having reintroduced the medieval scholastic concept of intentionality into contemporary philosophy.

Fritz Bauer was a German Jewish judge and prosecutor. He played an instrumental role in the post-war capture of former Holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann, and in bringing about the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.

Erwin Panofsky was a German-Jewish art historian whose work represents a high point in the modern academic study of iconography, including his hugely influential Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art and his seminal Early Netherlandish Painting.

Max Horkheimer was a German philosopher and sociologist best known for his role in developing critical theory as director of the Institute for Social Research, commonly associated with the Frankfurt School.

Jürgen Todenhöfer is a German author, journalist, politician, executive and former judge.

Gerhard Ludwig Müller is a German Catholic prelate who served as the Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 until 2017. Pope Francis elevated him to the rank of cardinal in 2014.

Kurt Zadek Lewin or Kurt Tsadek Lewin was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. During his professional career, Lewin's academic research and writings focuses on applied research, action research, and group communication.

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman and politician who served as the first chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a newly founded Christian democratic party, which became the dominant force in the country under his leadership. Adenauer is considered one of...

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western Marxism, and post-Kantianism, he made contributions to the philosophy of history, metaphysics, historical materialism, criticism, aesthetics and had an oblique but overwhelmingly influential impact on the resurrection of the Kabbalah by virtue of his...

Roger Willemsen was a German author, essayist and TV presenter.

Wangarĩ Maathai was a Kenyan social, environmental, and political activist who founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on planting trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.