Recipients of the Pour le M\u00e9rite (civil class)

Felix Gilbert (May 21, 1905 – February 14, 1991) was a German-born American historian of early modern and modern Europe.
Gilbert was born in Baden-Baden, Germany, to a middle-class Jewish family, and part of the Mendelssohn Bartholdy clan. In the latter half of the 1920s, Gilbert studied under Friedrich Meinecke at the University of Berlin. Gilbert's area of expertise was the Renaissance, especially the diplomatic history of the period He was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1962 to 1975, and maintained an active involvement as an emeritus faculty member until his death in 1991. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963 and the American Philosophical Society in 1969.The main reading room of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. is named in his honor.

Friedrich Meinecke (October 20, 1862 – February 6, 1954) was a German historian, with national liberal and antisemitic views, who supported the Nazi invasion of Poland. After World War II, as a representative of an older tradition, he criticized the Nazi regime, but continued to express antisemitic prejudices.In 1948, he helped to found the Free University of Berlin in West Berlin, and remained an important figure to the end of his life.

Eduard Gottlob Zeller (German: [ˈtsɛlɐ]; 22 January 1814, Kleinbottwar – 19 March 1908, Stuttgart) was a German philosopher and Protestant theologian of the Tübingen School of theology. He was well known for his writings on Ancient Greek philosophy, especially Pre-Socratic Philosophy, and most of all for his celebrated, multi-volume historical treatise The Philosophy of Greeks in their Historical Development (1844–52). Zeller was also a central figure in the revival of neo-Kantianism.