Recipients of the Order of Merit of Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg

Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d'Estaing (UK: ZHIH-skar dess-TÃ(N), US: zhih-SKAR-, French: [valeʁi ʁəne maʁi ʒɔʁʒ ʒiskaʁ dɛstɛ̃] ; 2 February 1926 – 2 December 2020), also known as Giscard or VGE, was a French politician who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981.After serving as Minister of Finance under prime ministers Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Pierre Messmer, Giscard d'Estaing won the presidential election of 1974 with 50.8% of the vote against François Mitterrand of the Socialist Party. His tenure was marked by a more liberal attitude on social issues—such as divorce, contraception and abortion—and by attempts to modernise the country and the office of the presidency, notably overseeing such far-reaching infrastructure projects as the TGV and the turn towards reliance on nuclear power as France's main energy source. Giscard d'Estaing launched the Grande Arche, Musée d'Orsay, Arab World Institute and Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie projects in the Paris region, later included in the Grands Projets of François Mitterrand. He promoted liberalisation of trade. However, his popularity suffered from the economic downturn that followed the 1973 energy crisis, marking the end of the "Trente Glorieuses" (thirty "glorious" years of prosperity after 1945). He imposed austerity budgets, and allowed unemployment to rise in order to avoid deficits. Giscard d'Estaing in the centre faced political opposition from both sides of the spectrum: from the newly unified left under Mitterrand and a rising Jacques Chirac, who resurrected Gaullism on a right-wing opposition line. In 1981, despite a high approval rating, he was defeated in a runoff against Mitterrand, with 48.2% of the vote.
As president, Giscard d'Estaing promoted cooperation among the European nations, especially in tandem with West Germany. As a former president, he was a member of the Constitutional Council. He also served as president of the Regional Council of Auvergne from 1986 to 2004. Involved with the process of European integration, he notably presided over the Convention on the Future of Europe that drafted the ill-fated Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. In 2003, he was elected to the Académie Française, taking the seat that his friend and former president of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor had held. He died at the age of 94, and is the longest-lived French president in history.

Ernst Jünger (German pronunciation: [ɛʁnst ˈjʏŋɐ]; 29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) was a German author, highly decorated soldier, philosopher, and entomologist who became publicly known for his World War I memoir Storm of Steel.
The son of a successful businessman and chemist, Jünger rebelled against an affluent upbringing and sought adventure in the Wandervogel German youth movement, before running away to briefly serve in the French Foreign Legion, which was an illegal act in Germany. However, he escaped prosecution due to his father's efforts and was able to enlist in the German Army on the outbreak of World War I in 1914. During an ill-fated offensive in 1918 Jünger was badly wounded and was awarded the Pour le Mérite, a rare decoration for one of his rank.
He wrote against liberal values, democracy, and the Weimar Republic, but rejected the advances of the Nazis who were rising to power. During World War II Jünger served as an army captain in occupied Paris, but by 1943 he had turned decisively against Nazi totalitarianism, a change manifested in his work "Der Friede" (The Peace). Jünger was dismissed from the army in 1944 after he was indirectly implicated with fellow officers who had plotted to kill Hitler. A few months later, his son died in combat in Italy after having been sentenced to a penal battalion for political reasons.After the war, Jünger was treated with some suspicion as a possible fellow traveller of the Nazis. By the later stages of the Cold War, his unorthodox writings about the impact of materialism in modern society were widely seen as conservative rather than radical nationalist, and his philosophical works came to be highly regarded in mainstream German circles. Jünger ended life as an honoured literary figure, although critics continued to charge him with the glorification of war as a transcendental experience in some of his early works. He was an ardent militarist and one of the most complex and contradictory figures in 20th-century German literature.

Albrecht Moritz James Karl Schoenhals (7 March 1888 – 4 December 1978) was a German film actor.

Peter Härtling (German: [ˈpeːtɐ ˈhɛʁtlɪŋ] ; 13 November 1933 – 10 July 2017) was a German writer, poet, publisher and journalist. He received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his major contribution to German literature.

Dieter Thomas Heck (born Carl-Dieter Heckscher; 29 December 1937 – 23 August 2018) was a German television presenter, singer and actor. He is known as the presenter of the popular TV program ZDF-Hitparade, featuring German Schlager music, from 1969 to 1984, reaching millions of people. As an actor, he starred in the TV play Das Millionenspiel in 1970.

Helmut Andreas Paul Grieshaber or HAP Grieshaber (15 February 1909 – 12 May 1981) was a German artist. His preferred medium was large format woodcuts.

Karl Münchinger (29 May 1915 – 13 March 1990) was a German conductor of European classical music. He helped to revive the now-ubiquitous Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel, through recording it with his Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in 1960. (Jean-François Paillard made a rival, and also very popular, recording of the same piece at around the same time.) Münchinger is also noted for restoring baroque traditions to the interpretation of Bach's oeuvre, his greatest musical love — moderate-sized forces, judicious ornamentation, and rhythmic sprightliness, though not on "period instruments".
Born in Stuttgart, Münchinger studied at the Hochschule für Musik in his home city. At first, he guest-conducted often, supporting himself also with other duties as an organist and church choir director. In 1941, he became principal conductor of the Hanover Symphony, a post he held for the next two years. He held no other conducting position until the end of World War II.
The year that the war ended, he founded the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester (Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra), which he built into an impressive touring ensemble; it made its Paris debut in 1949 and its American debut in San Francisco in 1953. Under his leadership the orchestra issued (for the Decca label) numerous recordings, mostly during the 1950s and 1960s, and mostly of Bach's output; these included the Brandenburg Concertos (three times), the orchestral suites, the St. Matthew Passion, the St. John Passion, The Musical Offering, and the Christmas Oratorio. Of his and the ensemble's non-Bach releases, probably the best — and certainly the most famous, other than the Pachelbel performance mentioned earlier — is that of Haydn's The Creation.
In 1977, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra became the first German ensemble to visit the People's Republic of China. Münchinger retired in 1988, two years before his death.
Stylistically, Münchinger's approach with his orchestra was rather similar to those of his somewhat younger contemporaries Raymond Leppard, Sir Neville Marriner, Claudio Scimone, and the above-mentioned Paillard, though displaying an extra element of tonal solidity — not to mention a fierce rigor during rehearsals as well as performances — which might be considered Teutonic. With the increased fashionability of 18th-century instruments, from the 1970s onward, Münchinger's interpretations fell dramatically from critical favor and were often dismissed as "passé", though he always showed himself to be a fine, tough, disciplined, and sensitive musician. There have been more profoundly imaginative German conductors than Münchinger, but there have been very few who matched his consistently high standards.

Franz Burda (24 February 1903 – 30 September 1986) was a German publisher. He inherited his father's publishing business, which he developed into what is now the Hubert Burda Media conglomerate.