Members of the 2nd Volkskammer

Bernard Johann Heinrich Koenen (17 February 1889 – 30 April 1964) was a German politician.Between 1953 and 1958 he was the East German ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

August Bach (30 August 1897 – 23 March 1966) was a German politician who led the Christian Democratic Union in East Germany from 1958 to 1966.August Bach was born in Rheydt. From 1915 to 1918 he served in German army. After the War he studied History at the University of Berlin. He worked as a journalist during the Weimar Republic and he was a member of the liberal German Democratic Party. From 1922 to 1944 he was the editor of the Berliner Monatshefte.
After World War II, Bach was the co-founder of East German Christian Democratic Union in Thüringen and was elected in the provincial executive of the CDUD of Thüringen. In 1947 he joined the Society for German-Soviet Russian Friendship (DSF) and he served as the vice-chairman of the DSF-Thüringen (1949). Later he was a member of the Presidium of the DSF.
From May 1950 Bach was the editor of the Thüringen Daily and member of the CDU Executive Commission and the CDU Political Commission. From 1955 to 1958 he served as chairman of the Länderkammer (the upper house of Parliament). A loyal supporter of the Communist SED regime, he helped push out those CDU members not willing to do the Communists' bidding, and led its formal transformation into a loyal partner of the SED in 1952.
After the death of Otto Nuschke, Bach was elected Chairman of the CDUD (as it was now known) in 1958. From 1958 to 1963 he was Vice-President of the Volkskammer and from 1963 to his death he served as member of the Presidium of the Volkskammer.

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.