Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Eugen Schmalenbach (20 August 1873 – 20 February 1955) was a German academic and economist. He was born in Halver, and attended the Leipzig College of Commerce starting in 1898. That college later became part of Leipzig University, only to emerge again as the Handelshochschule Leipzig.
Schmalenbach is best known as a professor at the University of Cologne, and as a contributor to German language journals on the subjects of economics, and the emerging fields of Business Management and financial accounting. He retired from active university life in 1933; one reason for this was to avoid attention, since his wife, Marianne Sachs, was Jewish. The couple had two children, Marian and Fritz. He died in Cologne in 1955.
Schmalenbach was the founder of the Schmalenbach Society, which works for closer links between research in business economics and the world of business. It still exists, after fusing with another organisation in 1978.Eugen Schmalenbach is sometimes confused with his brother, Herman Schmalenbach, a philosopher and sociologist known for his sociological concept of the bund, or communion, c.f., Kevin Hetherington ('The Contemporary Significance of Schmalenbach's Concept of the Bund'), and Howard G. Schneiderman ('Herman Schmalenbach,' in The Encyclopedia of Community).

Peter Bamm (a pen name; his real name was Curt Emmrich; 20 October 1897 in Hochneukirch, now part of Jüchen, Germany – 30 March 1975 in Zollikon, Switzerland) was a German writer.
Peter Bamm volunteered for military service in World War I, after which he studied medicine and sinology in Munich, Göttingen and Freiburg im Breisgau. As a ship's doctor he travelled the world a great deal before eventually settling in Berlin-Wedding.
During World War II he served as a military doctor on the Russian Front, and later described his experiences in the book "Die Unsichtbare Flagge" (The Invisible Flag). After the war he travelled for study purposes between 1952 and 1957 in the Near and Middle East, after which he wrote as a journalist and feature writer for a number of Berlin newspapers.
He is buried in the Stöcken Cemetery in Hanover.

Günther Klaus Fielmann (17 September 1939 – 3 January 2024) was a German billionaire businessman, the founder, majority owner and the chief executive officer of Fielmann, a German optics company focusing on retail eyewear. At the time of his death, his net worth was estimated at US$4.6 billion. From 2019, the management of Fielmann Group, was handed over completely to his son Marc Fielmann.

Friedrich Hermann Hund (4 February 1896 – 31 March 1997) was a German physicist from Karlsruhe known for his work on atoms and molecules.

Stefan Paul Andres (26 June 1906 – 29 June 1970) was a German novelist.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.As the Nazi regime flexed its power, Andres moved away to Italy in 1937, returning to Germany 13 years later. He was a widely read German writer in the post-World War II period.

Hermann Flohn (19 February 1912 – 23 June 1997) was a climatologist. Flohn was professor at the University of Bonn and head of the department at the Institute of Meteorology of Bonn University. He produced about 360 publications. Flohn was member in numerous scientific societies such as the Bavarian Academy, the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Academy of Belgium.

Francesco Marchisano (25 June 1929 – 27 July 2014) was an Italian Cardinal who worked in the Roman Curia from 1956 until his death.

Othmar Schoeck (1 September 1886 – 8 March 1957) was a Swiss Romantic classical composer, opera composer, musician, and conductor.
He was known mainly for his considerable output of art songs and song cycles, though he also wrote a number of operas, notably his one-act Penthesilea, which was premiered at the Semperoper in Dresden in 1927 and revived at the Lucerne Festival in 1999. He wrote a handful of instrumental compositions, including two string quartets and concertos for violin (for Stefi Geyer, dedicatee also of Béla Bartók's first concerto), cello and horn.

Detlev Karsten Rohwedder (16 October 1932 – 1 April 1991) was a German manager and politician, as member of the Social Democratic Party. He was named president of the Treuhandanstalt, the agency responsible for the reprivatization/privatization of all state-owned property in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), in September 1990, and served until his assassination by a Far Left terrorist organization, the Red Army Faction, in April 1991. He had also served as CEO of the steel manufacturer Hoesch AG since 1980.

Luise Rinser (30 April 1911 – 17 March 2002) was a German writer, best known for her novels and short stories.