Germany
63 profiles with fame based in Germany
Germans with Russian and Soviet roots
Germany hosts one of the largest Russian-speaking communities in Western Europe, built from several distinct migrations: the Russian émigrés of the 1920s who made Berlin a capital of exile, the Volga Germans (Spätaussiedler) whose families had lived in Russia since Catherine the Great and who returned after the USSR collapsed, and the Jewish and professional emigration of the 1990s.
Today their descendants are prominent in German music, film, sport, and business. This page documents notable figures in Germany whose heritage traces to the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, or modern Russia.
Capital Bra
Germany's most-charting rapper, born in Siberia
Helene Fischer
Siberia-born queen of German Schlager
Palina Rojinski
Leningrad-born queen of German pop culture
Zedd (Anton Zaslavski)
Grammy-winning producer born in Saratov, USSR
Alexander Zverev
German tennis player, 2026 French Open champion and Olympic gold medallist of Tokyo 2020; son of two Soviet tennis players from Sochi
Dmitry Glukhovsky
Moscow novelist who created the Metro series and became Russia's best-selling sci-fi author in exile
Yuri Dud
Russia's most-watched interviewer — his YouTube documentaries on the Gulag and Soviet history reached tens of millions
Emilia Schüle
Born in Blagoveshchensk, Russia, she became one of Germany's most celebrated young actresses
Gidon Kremer
Riga-born violin virtuoso who defected from the USSR and became a champion of new music
Gregor Gysi
German leftist politician whose mother was born in St. Petersburg and whose great-grandmother was Russian nobility
Heinrich Zertik
Kazakhstan-born Russlanddeutscher who became a CDU politician representing Germany's Russian-German community
Hermann Minkowski
Born in Kaunas (Russian Empire) — the mathematician who gave Einstein's relativity its geometry
Igor Levit
Nizhny Novgorod-born pianist who became Germany's most politically outspoken classical star
Ivan Rebroff
German singer who built his career as a Russian bass under an adopted Russian name
Kirill Petrenko
Omsk-born conductor who became Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic — the world's greatest orchestra
Kirill Serebrennikov
Rostov-born theatre and film director placed under house arrest by Putin — now in exile in Paris
Lou Andreas-Salomé
Writer and psychoanalyst born in St Petersburg, author of the first book on Nietzsche and a member of Freud's circle in Vienna
Nikolay Davydenko
Severodonetsk-born tennis star who reached World No. 3 and won the ATP World Tour Finals
Oonagh (Senta-Sofia Delliponti)
German Celtic folk singer with Bulgarian-Russian roots who became a surprise chart phenomenon
Otto Wallach
Born in Königsberg, Prussia, in 1847; 1910 Nobel laureate in chemistry for work on alicyclic compounds
Rashid Sunyaev
Born in Tashkent, USSR; the Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect bears his name
Rosa Luxemburg
Born in the Russian Empire's Polish territories — the most important female revolutionary thinker of the 20th century
Svetlana Alexievich
Born in Stanislav, Ukrainian SSR — Belarusian writer, 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature
Tatjana Maria
German tennis player who reached the 2022 Wimbledon semi-final as a mother of two
Vladimir Jurowski
Moscow-born conductor who leads the Bavarian State Opera and London Philharmonic — the heir to the German conducting tradition
Vladimir Sorokin
Born in Bykovo — Russia's most provocative living novelist, now in Berlin exile
Vladimir Voinovich
Satirist born in Stalinabad, author of The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin; lived in Germany 1980–1990
Waldemar Herdt
Kazakhstan-born Russlanddeutsche who became a CDU politician in Germany
Wassily Kandinsky
Moscow-born father of abstract painting
Wladimir Kaminer
Born in Moscow — the author and DJ who turned being a Russian in Berlin into the funniest book of the 2000s
Wladimir Klitschko
Born in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan — unified heavyweight champion who dominated boxing for a decade
Yuri Shevchuk
Born in Magadan — frontman of DDT, Russia's most politically fearless rock band
Zhanna Nemtsova
Daughter of assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov — journalist and democracy activist in Germany
Alisher Usmanov
Uzbek-born Russian billionaire who owned Arsenal FC and built USM Holdings — one of Russia's great fortunes
Nikita Volodin
Russian-trained pairs skater who teamed with Minerva Fabienne Hase and won Grand Prix events for Germany
Dimitrij Ovtcharov
Born in Donetsk, became Germany's greatest table tennis player and world No. 1
Viatcheslav Mukhanov
The man who explained why the universe looks the way it does — father of cosmological inflation theory
Katja Petrowskaja
Born in Kyiv — Maybe Esther became one of the most celebrated European literary debuts of the century
Daniel Donskoy
Moscow-born German actor, musician and host of Freitagnacht Jews
Ekaterina Leonova
Russian ballroom champion who won Let's Dance and became one of Germany's most beloved TV personalities
Olga Grjasnova
Baku-born German-language novelist, winner of the Anna Seghers Prize
Stefanie Giesinger
Germany's Next Top Model winner turned international supermodel — mother is a Russian-German Aussiedler
Maximilian Mundt
Lead of Netflix's How to Sell Drugs Online Fast — Germany's biggest streaming star with Russian paternal roots
Marina Weisband
Kyiv-born political director of Germany's Pirate Party — a new kind of democratic voice
Sergey Lagodinsky
Volgograd-born MEP who became Germany's leading Russian-origin voice in the European Parliament
Paul Ziemiak
CDU politician and former party secretary-general with Eastern European roots
Walter Homolka
Germany's leading liberal rabbi — rebuilt Jewish life in Germany with Russian-Jewish diaspora roots
Katharina Thalbach
Berlin theatrical legend with Russian theatrical roots — the most beloved actress on the German-speaking stage
Mark Waschke
Star of Dark (Netflix) — Germany's most internationally recognised dramatic actor with Russian family roots
Shirin David
Germany's biggest female rapper with Lithuanian-Russian Jewish roots — 4 million YouTube subscribers
Bernd Leno
German national team goalkeeper of Russian-German Aussiedler descent — Arsenal and Fulham Premier League star
Waldemar Anton
Born in Russia, became a Bundesliga star for Hannover and Stuttgart — German international
Oskar Hartmann
Russian-born serial entrepreneur who co-founded Westwing and KK&K — Germany's startup ecosystem connector
Nikita Zhivotovskiy
Russian-born mathematics professor at TU Munich — one of Europe's leading combinatorists
Kostja Ullmann
Russian-born German actor known for Sommersturm and major German romantic comedies
Olexesh
Kyiv-born German rapper; No. 1 album in Germany with Rolexesh (2018)
Arseniy Vershinin
Grew up in a small Siberian town, studied nuclear physics in Moscow — then co-founded Personio, Germany's $6B HR tech giant
Carl Albrecht
Bremen cotton merchant who married a Charleston planter heiress
Carl Albrecht
Physician and philosopher of mystical consciousness
Ernst Albrecht
Brussels director-general, Lower Saxony premier, Knoop heir
George Alexander Albrecht
Germany's youngest Generalmusikdirektor, three decades in Hannover
Ursula von der Leyen
President of the European Commission, descended from the Russian Empire's cotton baron
Hermann Keyserling
Baltic German philosopher born in Livonia in 1880, author of The Travel Diary of a Philosopher and founder of the School of Wisdom in Darmstadt