German Protestants

Gustav Ernst Stresemann (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʊstaf ˈʃtʁeːzəˌman] ; 10 May 1878 – 3 October 1929) was a German statesman who served as chancellor of Germany from August to November 1923, and as foreign minister from 1923 to 1929. His most notable achievement was the reconciliation between Germany and France, for which he and French Prime Minister Aristide Briand received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926. During a period of political instability and fragile, short-lived governments, Stresemann was the most influential politician in most of the Weimar Republic's existence.
Stresemann attended the University of Berlin and Leipzig University, where he studied political economy, history and international law and developed his vision of liberalism and nationalism, a combination of views that would define his political career. After obtaining his doctorate, Stresemann worked in trade associations before entering politics. In 1907, he was elected to the Reichstag as a deputy for the National Liberal Party. He lost his seat in 1912 but was reelected two years later. During the First World War, he was a vocal advocate for German militarism and expansionism. Exempted from war service due to poor health, he gradually became the National Liberals' de facto leader, before formally taking over the party in 1917. Germany's defeat and the fall of the Hohenzollern monarchy came as a significant shock to Stresemann, forcing him to gradually reassess his previous positions. He founded the German People's Party (DVP) and, despite his own monarchist beliefs, came to grudgingly accept Weimar democracy and became open to working with the centre and the left.
In August 1923, Stresemann was named chancellor and foreign minister of a grand coalition government. During his brief chancellorship, he abandoned the policy of passive resistance against the French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, and introduced the Rentenmark in a (relatively successful) attempt to tame hyperinflation in the country. In November, Stresemann's reshuffled government collapsed after the Social Democratics withdrew from the coalition. He resigned as chancellor following a vote of no confidence, but remained as foreign minister in the new government led by Wilhelm Marx. His first major diplomatic success was the 1924 Dawes Plan, which reduced Germany's overall reparations commitment. It was followed by the Locarno Treaties in 1925, which confirmed Germany's postwar western borders, guaranteed peace with France, and provided for Germany's admission to the League of Nations a year later. Stresemann also moved to improve relations with the Soviet Union through the 1926 Treaty of Berlin. In 1928, he oversaw Germany's participation in the Kellogg–Briand Pact, in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve international conflicts.
Amid failing health, Stresemann successfully negotiated the Young Plan which sought to further reduce German reparations payments. He died in October 1929 after a series of strokes at the age of 51.

Theodor Hermann Sternberg (5 January 1878 – 18 April 1950) was a German legal philosopher serving as a foreign advisor in Meiji period Japan, where he was an important contributor to the development of civil law in Japan.

Franz Kaufmann (5 January 1886 – 17 February 1944) was a German jurist murdered in the Holocaust. His role helping underground Jews survive in hiding in Berlin and his execution are documented in The Forger, the memoirs of Cioma Schönhaus.Kaufmann was born to Jewish parents on 5 January 1886 and baptized a Protestant. He served in the first World War in the 10th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment receiving, among other medals, the Iron Cross. After being wounded he was discharged from the army in 1918 as a reserve lieutenant. He obtained a doctorate in law and political science and in 1922 was appointed to a specialist post in government finances in the Prussian ministry of the interior. He later became chief secretary of the Reich Public Accounts Office, in the finance ministry.In 1936, because of his Jewish origins, he was dismissed from his post as chief secretary. When World War II broke out in 1939, he volunteered for the Red Cross but was refused, again due to his Jewish origins. He continued to enjoy privileged status due his then so-called racially mixed marriage to an Aryan-classified woman and because he brought up his daughter as a Christian.Kaufmann joined a bible study group with The Confessing Church at Berlin-Dahlem in 1940, and—with other members of the church—began to supply post-office identity cards to on-the-run Jews. Ultimately he headed an underground group that created and supplied all manner of fake documents to underground Jews, including certificates of Aryan descent, driving licenses, and food ration cards. These documents were essential to the survival of many Berlin Jews.He was arrested in August 1943. No charges were laid against him, since as a Jew in Nazi Germany he was subject not to German law but to police power. On 17 February 1944 he was taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and shot.

Theodor Habicht (4 April 1898 – 31 January 1944) was a leading political figure in Nazi Germany. He played a leading role in the Austrian Nazi Party. During World War II, he was involved in the administration of Nazi-occupied Norway until his dismissal by Adolf Hitler. He later served in the Wehrmacht and was killed in action on the Eastern Front at Nevel in 1944.

Otto Böckel (2 July 1859, Free City of Frankfurt – 17 September 1923, Michendorf) was a German populist politician who became one of the first to successfully exploit antisemitism as a political issue in the country.

Count Wilhelm Otto Albrecht von Bismarck-Schönhausen (1 August 1852 – 30 May 1901) was a German counselor, civil servant and politician, who served as a member of the Reichstag from 1880 to 1881 and president of the Regency of Hanover from 1889 to 1890. The youngest son of Otto von Bismarck, he and his brother Herbert von Bismarck both resigned their posts after the elder Bismarck was dismissed as Chancellor of Germany in 1890. Wilhelm subsequently accepted an appointment as Governor of East Prussia in 1894. Mount Wilhelm (German: Wilhelmsberg, or in Kuman: Enduwa Kombuglu, or Kombugl'o Dimbin) the highest mountain in Papua New Guinea at 4,509 metres (14,793 ft), part of the Bismarck Range, was named after him by Hugo Zöller.

Käte Stresemann (née Kleefeld; 15 July 1883 – 23 July 1970) was the wife of the German Chancellor, Foreign Minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Gustav Stresemann. Widely admired for her elegance and intelligence, she was a prominent figure of society in the 1920s. As the wife of the foreign minister she made her salon at Tauentzienstraße 12a a meeting place of diplomats.
She was the daughter of a prominent Berlin industrialist, Adolf (also known as Arthur, born Aaron) Kleefeld. Both of her parents were born Jewish, but they raised their children as Lutherans. In 1903 she married Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929), who later became Chancellor and Foreign Minister of the Weimar Republic, and bore him two sons, Wolfgang (1904–1998) and Hans-Joachim (1908–1999).
Her brother, Kurt von Kleefeld, was the last person in Germany to be ennobled, when he was raised to the hereditary nobility of the Principality of Lippe by Leopold IV, Prince of Lippe "in recognition of his loyal service" to his noble lord, Christian Kraft of Hohenlohe-Ohringen, Duke of Ujest, on request by the latter, on 12 November 1918, the same day as the Prince's abdication.Kleefeld is mentioned in one of the fictitious quotes the 8 November 1926 issue of Time satirically attributed to quite a number of prominent people under the headline: Had they been interviewed, some people who figured in last week's news might have related certain of their doings as follows: Gustav Stresemann, Foreign Minister of Germany: "A story went the rounds of Berlin last week that my ability to entertain lavishly on a salary of $6,400 a year is due to the kindly furtherance of my affairs by the multimillionaire Dr. von Kleefeld, my bachelor brother-in-law."In August 1929, when Käte Stresemann hosted the program for spouses at the 25th World Advertising Congress in Berlin, Time described her as "no hausfrau, but a young, elegant, cosmopolite, English speaking Jewess, a woman equipped with the conversation of the polite world, equal to parlor or nightclub."
In the autumn of 1939 she fled Nazi Germany with her son Wolfgang and his family and settled in the United States, where her son Hans-Joachim had already found refuge. She lived in New York City until her death on a visit to Germany.

Elisabeth Röhl; née Elisabeth Gohlke ( 22 August 1888 – 21 September 1930) was one of the first German women politicians.
Her second marriage was to the fellow politician Emil Kirschmann, as a result of which sources after 1922 generally identify her as Elisabeth Kirschmann-Röhl.

Victor Klemperer (9 October 1881 – 11 February 1960) was a German scholar who also became known as a diarist. His journals, published in Germany in 1995, detailed his life under the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the German Democratic Republic.
The three volumes of his diaries have been published in English translations: I Shall Bear Witness, To the Bitter End, and The Lesser Evil. The first two cover the period of the Third Reich have since become standard sources and have been extensively quoted. His book Lingua Tertii Imperii, published in English as The Language of the Third Reich, studies how Nazi propaganda manipulated and influenced the German language.

Elisabeth Eleonore Anna Justine Heuss-Knapp (née Knapp; 25 January 1882 – 19 July 1952) was a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), social reformer, author and wife of German president Theodor Heuss. She was the founder of the Müttergenesungswerk charitable organisation officially called Elly Heuss-Knapp Foundation in her honour.