German women academics

Hilde Neumann (born Hilde Martha Betty Rosenfeld: 13 April 1905, in Berlin-Karlshorst – 11 September 1959, in Berlin) was a German lawyer.She was politically leftwing and of Jewish provenance: she spent the Nazi years in exile. In 1947 she returned to Berlin and resumed her political focus, becoming a senior legal official in the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED), which by 1949 had become the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) which was formally established in October of that year. She also served as editor in chief of "Neue Justiz", an East German monthly specialist journal concerned with legal matters.

Gesine Schwan (née Schneider, 22 May 1943) 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.