Grand Crosses 1st class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Hans_Globke

Hans Josef Maria Globke (10 September 1898 – 13 February 1973) was a German administrative lawyer, who worked in the Prussian and Reich Ministry of the Interior in the Reich, during the Weimar Republic and the time of National Socialism and was later the Under-Secretary of State and Chief of Staff of the German Chancellery in West Germany from 28 October 1953 to 15 October 1963 under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. He is the most prominent example of the continuity of the administrative elites between Nazi Germany and the early West Germany.
In 1936, Globke wrote a legal annotation on the antisemitic Nuremberg Race Laws that did not express any objection to the discrimination against Jews, placing the Nazi Party on a firmer legal ground and setting the path to the Holocaust during World War II. By 1938, Globke had been promoted to Ministerialdirigent in the Office for Jewish Affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, where he produced the Name Change Ordinance, a law that forced Jewish men to take the middle name Israel and Jewish women Sara for easier identification. In 1941, during the Nazi period, he issued another statute that stripped Jews in occupied territories of their statehood and possessions. Globke was identified as the author of an interior ministry report from France, written in racist language, that complained of "coloured blood into Europe" and called for the "elimination" of its "influences" on the gene pool.Globke later had a controversial career as Secretary of State and Chief of Staff of the West German Chancellery. A strident anti-communist, Globke became a powerful éminence grise of the West German government, and was widely regarded as one of the most influential public officials in the government of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Globke had a major role in shaping the course and structure of the state and West Germany's alignment with the United States. He was also an important figure in West Germany's anti-communist policies at the domestic and international level and in the Western intelligence community, and was the German government's main liaison with NATO and other Western intelligence services, especially the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Prince_Joachim_of_Denmark

Prince Joachim of Denmark, Count of Monpezat, (Danish pronunciation: [ˈjoːæˌkʰim]; Joachim Holger Waldemar Christian; born 7 June 1969) is a member of the Danish royal family. The younger son of Queen Margrethe II, he is fifth in the line of succession to the Danish throne, following the four children of his elder brother King Frederik X.

Martin_Niemoller

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem "First they came ...". The poem exists in many versions; the one featured on the United States Holocaust Memorial reads: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me."
Niemöller was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and a self-identified antisemite. He became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches. He opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph. For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution. After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help victims of the Nazis. He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International from 1966 to 1972. He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.

Jorge_Basadre

Jorge Alfredo Basadre Grohmann (12 February 1903 – 29 June 1980) was a Peruvian historian known for his extensive publications about the independent history of his country. He served during two different administrations as Minister of Education and was also director of the Peruvian National Library.

Honorio_Delgado

Honorio Delgado Espinosa (born Arequipa, 26 September 1892 - died Lima, 28 November 1969) was a gifted teacher, a creative researcher, a humanist, a philosopher, a linguist, and scholar whose work covered almost 50 years of the 20th-century history of Latin American psychiatry. Born in Arequipa, Peru, Delgado graduated from Lima's School of Psychology at the National University of San Marcos.

Knut_Vollebæk

Knut Vollebæk (born 11 February 1946 in Oslo) is a former Norwegian diplomat to the United States, (2001–2007, and centrist politician (Norwegian Christian Democratic Party)). He is currently a member of the International Commission on Missing Persons Board of Commissioners and heads a government commission investigating the situation of Norwegian Travellers.

Christian_Stock

Christian Stock (28 August 1884, Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse – 13 April 1967 in Seeheim-Jugenheim) was a German Social Democrat politician and the first Minister-President of the provisional state of Greater Hesse (later Hesse), which had been constituted in the aftermath of World War II.
Stock was over 82 at the time of his death, making him the oldest Minister-President that the Republic had had until then.

Willy_De_Clercq

Willy Clarisse Elvire Hector, Viscount De Clercq (8 July 1927 – 28 October 2011) was a Belgian liberal politician.
De Clercq was born in Ghent, son of Frans de Clercq. After his law and notariat studies at the University of Ghent and a scholarship at Syracuse University (Syracuse, United States), De Clerq became a lawyer at the Court of appeal in Ghent and a professor at Ghent University and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Although he could have had a successful career in law, he got into politics. He was member of the Liberal youth and was elected municipal councillor and member of parliament.
De Clercq served in various coalition governments. He was secretary of state for the budget (1960–1961), deputy prime minister and minister of the budget from 1966 to 1968, deputy prime minister and Minister of Finance in 1973–1974, Minister of Finance in 1974–1977, and deputy prime minister in 1980.
De Clercq served as president of various international monetary instances and as president of the then liberal party PVV. He served for a term as a member of the European Commission (1985–1989). Moreover, he became Minister of State in 1985. From 1989 to 2004, he was a member of the European Parliament.
In 2003, he created together with other prominent European personalities the Medbridge Strategy Center, whose goal is to promote dialogue and mutual understanding between Europe and the Middle-East.He died on 28 October 2011.

Celso_Benigno_Luigi_Costantini

Celso Benigno Luigi Costantini (3 April 1876 – 17 October 1958) was an Italian Roman Catholic cardinal and the founder of the Disciples of the Lord who served as the Apostolic Chancery from 1954 until his death.He was elevated to the Cardinalship
in 12 January 1953. He is best known for his work in China. Costantini dedicated himself to improving the work of missionaries and believed that evangelization in China belonged to the Chinese people. His time there heralded countless successes and he was careful never to involve himself in the complex politics between the Church and the State.His cause for sainthood commenced on 24 June 2016 under Pope Francis and he has been titled as a Servant of God.

Achille_Van_Acker

Achille Van Acker (8 April 1898 – 10 July 1975) was a Belgian politician who served three terms as the prime minister of Belgium between 1946 and 1958. A moderate from Flanders, Van Acker was a member of the Belgian Socialist Party (PSB–BSP) and played an important role in the creation of the Belgian welfare state after World War II.