100 Notable alumni of University of Munster

Sascha Vogt is a German politician. From June 2010 until December 2013 he was chairperson of the Young Socialists in the SPD (also called "Jusos"), a division of the German Social Democratic Party.

Karl A. Lamers is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as a member of the German Parliament from 1994 until 2021. From 2010 to 2012 he was the President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

Vello Salo was an Estonian Catholic cleric, essayist, translator. He was a notable promoter of Estonian literature in exile. He was a Catholic.

Most Reverend Dr. Heinrich Mussinghoff was the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Aachen, Germany, from 11 February 1995 until the acceptance of his resignation on 8 December 2015.

Linda Stahl is a retired German track and field athlete who competed in the javelin throw.

Julius Ficker or Julius von Ficker or Johann Kaspar Julius Ficker von Feldhaus was a Roman Catholic German historian. In 1898 he was awarded the Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts.

Hermann Volk was a German cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Mainz from 1962 to 1982, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1973.

Thomas Hoeren is a German law professor and a former Court of appeal judge with focus on Information and Media Law.

Ewald Frie is a German historian and biographer at the University of Tübingen. His research interests include German history of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, European nobility, poverty and the welfare state, and Australian history.

Burkhard Blienert is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as Commissioner on Narcotic Drugs at the Federal Ministry of Health in the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz since 2022. From 2013 to 2017 he was a member of the German Bundestag.

Diana Sorbello is a German schlager singer.

Wilhelmine Lübke was the wife of Heinrich Lübke. When he became President of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1959, she represented the country internationally. She founded the Kuratorium Deutsche Altershilfe and was president of the Müttergenesungswerk. The Wilhelmine-Lübke-Preis is named after her.

Nikolaus Schneider was from 9 November 2010 to 10 November 2014 president of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD).

Rainer Kraft is a German politician for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and since 2017 member of the Bundestag.

Ortwin Runde is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He was the First Mayor (Erster Bürgermeister) of the Free and Hanseatic City Hamburg from 1997 to 2001.

Lutz Hachmeister was a German media historian, award-winning filmmaker and journalist. He particularly gained international attention for directing the 2005 film The Goebbels Experiment, co-produced by the BBC and the Canadian History channel, and featuring Kenneth Branagh as the narrator for the Goebbels Diaries. In 2006 Hachmeister established the Institute for Media and Communication Policy (IfM) in Berlin and Cologne,...

Ahmad Milad Karimi is an Afghan-born German philosopher of religion, scholar of Islam, translator of the Koran, and poet. Karimi is professor of Islamic Philosophy at the University of Münster.

Leo Jeremiah O'Donovan III SJ is an American Jesuit priest and theologian who served as president of Georgetown University from 1989 to 2001.

Wilhelm Karl Joseph Killing was a German mathematician who made important contributions to the theories of Lie algebras, Lie groups, and non-Euclidean geometry.

Hans Tietmeyer was a German economist and regarded as one of the foremost experts on international financial matters. He was president of Deutsche Bundesbank from 1993 until 1999 and remained afterwards one of the most important figures in finance of the European Union.

Franz Kamphaus was a German Catholic prelate, bishop emeritus of the Diocese of Limburg. He was bishop of the diocese from 1982 after teaching pastoral theology and homiletics at the University of Münster. He was the only German bishop to oppose Pope John Paul II in the matter of counseling pregnant women in conflict situations. After his term ended in...

Ulrich Grillo is a German entrepreneur and former president of the Federation of German Industries (BDI).

Ulrich Deppendorf is a German journalist and television presenter.

Michael Espendiller is a German politician for the populist Alternative for Germany and since 2017 a member of the Bundestag.

Hermann Lübbe is a German philosopher. He is considered a member of the Ritter School.

Laurenz Meyer is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). From 2000 to 2004 he was general secretary of the CDU.

Manuel Sacristán Luzón was a Spanish philosopher and writer.

Andreas Pinkwart is a German politician and academic who served as State Minister for Economic Affairs, Digitization, Innovation and Energy in the governments of Ministers-President Armin Laschet and Hendrik Wüst of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2017 to 2022 and as Deputy Minister-President and State Minister for Innovation, Technology and Research from 2005 to 2010. He previously was the Dean of HHL...

Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade was a German astronomer who worked in the United States from 1931 to 1959.

Stephan Burger is a German Roman Catholic clergyman. Since 2014 he has been Archbishop of Freiburg and Metropolitan Bishop of the Ecclesiastical Province of Freiburg.

Joxe Azurmendi Otaegi was a Spanish Basque writer, philosopher, essayist and poet. He published numerous articles and books on ethics, politics, the philosophy of language, technique, Basque literature and philosophy in general.

Friedrich Ernst Peter Hirzebruch ForMemRS was a German mathematician, working in the fields of topology, complex manifolds and algebraic geometry, and a leading figure in his generation. He has been described as "the most important mathematician in Germany of the postwar period."

Georg Milbradt is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Minister-President of Saxony from 2002 to 2008.

Rudolf Seiters is a German politician of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) party.

Reiner Klimke was a German equestrian, who won six gold and two bronze medals in dressage at the Summer Olympics — a record for equestrian events that has since been surpassed. He appeared in six Olympics from 1960 to 1988, excluding the 1980 Games that were boycotted by West Germany.

Brigitte Hamann was a German-Austrian author and historian based in Vienna.

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde was a German legal scholar and a justice on Germany's Federal Constitutional Court. He was a professor at the University of Freiburg and the author of more than 20 books and 80 articles dealing with legal and constitutional theory, as well as political theory, political philosophy and Catholic political thought. Böckenförde was considered a member of the Ritter...

Josefine Paul is a German politician who is a member of Alliance 90/The Greens. She has been a member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2010 and has been serving as North Rhine-Westphalia State Minister for Children, Youth, Family, Equality, Asylum and Integration in the Second Wüst cabinet from 2022 until 2026.

Kamla Bhasin was an Indian developmental feminist activist, poet, author and social scientist. Bhasin's work, that began in 1970, focused on gender education, human development and the media. She lived in New Delhi, India. She was best known for her work with Sangat - A Feminist Network and for her poem Kyunki main ladki hoon, mujhe padhna hai. In 1995,...

Andreas Kemper is a German sociologist and author. He is an author about Classism and an analyst on anti-democratic tendencies in Germany, including those of the AfD.

Thomas Bellut is a German journalist. From 2012 to 2022, he was the director (German: Intendant) of the TV channel ZDF.

Monika Grütters is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (Staatsministerin für Kultur und Medien) in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2013-2021. She was a member of the German Bundestag from 2005 to 2025, where she served as chairwoman of the Committee on Culture and...

Fritz Vahrenholt is a German politician (SPD), industrialist, and climate change denier.

Burkhard Jung is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been the 21st lord mayor (Oberbürgermeister) of Leipzig (Saxony) since 2006.

Klaus Hurrelmann is a professor of public health and education at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany.

Wera Benedicta Hobhouse is a British-German Liberal Democrat politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bath since 2017.

Ruprecht Polenz is a German politician and member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) political party.

Juan Antonio Mayorga Ruano is a Spanish dramatist. He is best known in English-speaking countries for his 2004 play Himmelweg (Way to Heaven), which was brought to the London stage in June 2017 as part of the Festival of Spanish Theatre in London (Festelón).

Gerd Faltings is a German mathematician known for his work in arithmetic geometry. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1986 for his proofs of the Mordell Conjecture and several related conjectures.

Katja Suding is a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) was a member of the German Bundestag from 2017 to 2021. She served as chairwoman of her party's parliamentary group in the Hamburgische Bürgerschaft from 2010 until 2017.

Gerhard Johannes Paul Domagk was a German pathologist and bacteriologist.

Svenja Flaßpöhler is a German philosopher, journalist, and author. She has been editor-in-chief of Philosophie Magazin since 2018.

Josep Maria Terricabras i Nogueras was a Spanish philosopher, academic and politician. He was elected Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Republican Left of Catalonia in the 2014 European Parliament election. Terricabras was born in Calella on 12 July 1946, and died on 16 April 2024, at the age of 77.

Reinhard Mohn was a German billionaire businessman and philanthropist. Under his leadership, Bertelsmann, once a medium-sized printing and publishing house, established in 1835, developed into a global media conglomerate. In 1977, he founded the non-profit foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung, which is today one of the largest foundations in Germany, with worldwide reach.

Klaus Töpfer was a German politician (CDU) and environmental politics expert. From 1998 to 2006 he was executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

René Obermann is a German businessman who is chairman of Warburg Pincus International LLC's European operations, and chairman of Airbus since April 2020. He was previously (from November 2006 to December 2013) CEO of Deutsche Telekom.

Ulrike Beate Guérot is a Berlin-based German political thinker and Founder and Director of the European Democracy Lab (EDL). In April 2016, the University for Continuing Education Krems appointed Ulrike Guérot as Professor for European Policy and the Study of Democracy. She was the head of the Department for European Policy and the Study of Democracy. From 2021 until March...

Takashi Takai is a Japanese politician and former bureaucrat who currently serves as a member of the House of Representatives for the Kita-Kantō PR block. He formerly served on two other occasions in the House of Representatives. He currently serves as Secretary-General of Reiwa Shinsengumi, and has twice previously been elected to the House of Representatives. Having previously been a...

Kai Diekmann is a German businessman and former journalist. From 1998 until 2000 he was editor of Welt am Sonntag (English: World on Sunday). From January 2001 to December 2015 he was chief editor of Bild. He is also a member of the executive board of the Turkish daily Hürriyet.

Oliver Lars Fred Kalkofe is a German actor, comedian, satirist, writer and audiobook narrator.

Kim Chong-in is a South Korean economist and politician. He was the interim chairman of the Minjoo Party of Korea from January to August 2016 and a member-elect of the National Assembly on the party's proportional list since the April 2016 parliamentary election. He was previously a member of the Assembly from 1981 to 1988, 1992 to 1994, and 2004...

Peter Hyballa is a German professional football manager who most recently was the manager of South African Premiership club Sekhukhune United. He also served as manager at clubs in Germany, Namibia, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark and Slovakia.

Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst is a German prelate of the Catholic Church and theologian. He was a vicar and an auxiliary bishop in Münster before becoming the Bishop of Limburg in January 2008. Pope Francis removed him from the exercise of his episcopal office on 23 October 2013 and on 26 March 2014 accepted his resignation as Bishop of Limburg, following...

Miriam Meckel is a German journalist and professor for Corporate Communication, editor and publisher of the German magazine Wirtschaftswoche and Director of the Institute for Media and Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

Thomas Middelhoff is a German corporate manager. From 1994 to 1998, he was a member of the executive board of Bertelsmann AG, then CEO of the Bertelsmann media group from November 1998 to July 2002. In 2002, he was head of corporate investments in Europe for Investcorp International Ltd until May 2005. From May 2005 to February 2009, Middelhoff then...

Hendrik Josef Wüst is a German politician serving as Minister-President of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2021. He is a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In October 2021, he succeeded Armin Laschet as state chairman of his party. Under Wüst's leadership, his party won the highest vote share in the 2022 North Rhine-Westphalia state election.

Alena Michaela Buyx is a German medical ethicist and professor. She was the Chair of the German Ethics Council from 2020 until April 2024.

Paul Ziemiak is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since the 2017 federal election. In addition to his parliamentary work, he has been serving as the Secretary General of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2022, under the leadership of chairman Hendrik Wüst.

Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass was a German mathematician often cited as the "father of modern analysis". Despite leaving university without a degree, he studied mathematics and trained as a school teacher, eventually teaching mathematics, physics, botany and gymnastics. He later received an honorary doctorate and became professor of mathematics in Berlin.

Marina Weisband is a German politician. From May 2011 until April 2012 she was a member of the senior leadership of the Pirate Party Germany. In 2018 she joined the Green Party of Germany.

Ulrike Marie Meinhof was a German left-wing militant, journalist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the reputed author of The Urban Guerilla Concept (1971). The manifesto acknowledges the RAF's "roots in the history of the student movement"; condemns "reformism" as "a brake...

Judith Deborah Rakers is a German journalist and television presenter.

Boris Ludwig Pistorius is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) who has been serving as Federal Minister of Defence in the governments of successive Chancellors Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz since 2023, making him the only minister of the Scholz cabinet to retain his position. He is considered to be amongst the most...

Selma Sabina Ergeç is a Turkish-German actress, beauty pageant titleholder, model, designer, philologist, psychologist and doctor. She is known for her performance in Kırımlı, Asi, Vatanım Sensin, Yaşamayanlar, Yarım Elma, Gönül İşleri and Muhteşem Yüzyıl as the sister of Sultan Süleyman; Hatice Sultan.

Oliver Welke is a German television presenter, journalist, satirist, comedian and voice actor.

Wolfgang Kubin is a German poet, essayist, sinologist and translator of literary works. He is the former director of the Institute for Oriental and Asian Studies at the University of Bonn, Germany. Kubin has frequently been a guest professor at universities in China, for instance at Beijing Foreign Studies University, but also in Madison, Wisconsin, and in Jerusalem. Since 1989,...

Erwin Sellering is a German politician. He served as the 4th Minister President of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern from 2008 to 2017.

Hermann Löns was a German journalist and writer. He is most famous as "The Poet of the Heath" for his novels and poems celebrating the people and landscape of the North German moors, particularly the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony. Löns is well known in Germany for his famous folksongs. He was also a hunter, naturalist and conservationist. Despite being...

Theodor Anton Blank was a German politician of the CDU. He was one of the founders of the CDU in 1945.

Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen is a German politician and physician who has served as President of the European Commission since 2019. She served in the German federal government between 2005 and 2019, holding positions in Angela Merkel's cabinet, most recently as Federal Minister for Defence. She is a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its affiliated...

Annette Kurschus is a German Protestant theologian and pastor. She was Praeses (or in German Präses) of the Protestant Church of Westphalia from 2012 until 2023, in November 2015 she became Vice-President of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD – Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland). She was President of the Council of the EKD from 2021 until 2023.

Wolfgang Clement was a German politician and a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). He was the 7th Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia from 27 May 1998 to 22 October 2002 and Federal Minister of Economics and Labour from 2002 to 2005. He was an Honorary Member of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.

Ingrid Matthäus-Maier is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

Katharina Nocun is a Polish-German politician and author who, from May 2013 to October 2016, has been the policy coordinator of the Pirate Party of Germany.

Ludger Stühlmeyer is a German cantor, organist, composer, docent and musicologist.

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.

Andreas Raymond Dombret is a German-American banker who served as member of the executive board of the Deutsche Bundesbank from 2010 until 2018. In that capacity, he held responsibility for Banking and Financial Supervision, Risk Controlling and the Bundesbank's Representative Offices abroad.

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is a Romanian-born German, Roman Catholic feminist theologian, who is currently the Krister Stendahl Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.

Lujo Brentano was a German economist and social reformer.

Brigitte Mohn is a German businesswoman and chairwoman of the executive board of the Bertelsmann Stiftung. She is a shareholder of the Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft (BVG) and a member of the supervisory boards of the Bertelsmann group. Mohn is also chairwoman of the board of trustees of the German Stroke Foundation.

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.

Rita Süssmuth was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as the tenth president of the Bundestag.

Franz Hengsbach was a German Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Bishop of Essen from 1957 to 1991, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1988.

Heinrich August Winkler is a German historian.

Karl Ernst Thomas de Maizière is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Federal Minister of the Interior from 2009 to 2011 and 2013 to 2018, as well as Federal Minister of Defence from 2011 to 2013. He previously served as Head of the Chancellery and Federal Minister for Special Affairs in the First Merkel...

Hans-Werner Sinn is a German economist who served as President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research from 1999 to 2016. He currently serves on the German ministry of economy’s advisory council. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics and Public Finance at the University of Munich.

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...

Snježana Kordić is a Croatian linguist. In addition to her work in syntax, she has written on sociolinguistics. Kordić is known among non-specialists for her numerous articles against the puristic and prescriptive language policy in Croatia. Her 2010 book on language and nationalism popularised the theory of pluricentric languages in the Balkans.

Peter Kohlgraf is a German Catholic prelate who has served as Bishop of Mainz since 2017.