Politicians
- John Peter Altgeld – former Union troop, Illinois governor and leading figure of the Progressive Era movement
- Edward L. Bader – politician who served as mayor of Atlantic City, New Jersey.
- William B. Bader – US Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs from 1999 to 2001.
- Gary Bauer – politician
- Martin Baum – former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio, fought with General Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers
- John Boehner – Republican House Majority Leader in the 109th Congress, and a US Representative from Ohio's 8th congressional district
- William C. Bouck – governor of the New York from 1843 to 1844
- Philip Becker – mayor of Buffalo, New York, serving 1876–1877 and 1886–1889.
- Louis Brandeis – United States Supreme Court justice
- Martin Grove Brumbaugh – Pennsylvania's 25th Governor (Republican)
- Warren E. Burger – former Chief Justice of the United States
- Henry Burk – former Republican member of the US House of Representatives from Pennsylvania
- George W. Bush – American president (2001–2009)
- Earl Lauer Butz – Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford
- Hiester Clymer – former political leader from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
- Kent Conrad – US Senator from North Dakota
- Mark Critz – Congressman for Pennsylvania's 12th congressional district
- William Q. Dallmeyer – Missouri politician
- Tom Daschle – US Senator from South Dakota from 1987 to 2005, former Senate Majority Leader
- William J. Diehl – served as Mayor of Pittsburgh from 1899 to 1901, a thirty-third degree Mason.
- Gerhard Anton (Anthony) Eickhoff – journalist, editor, author, lawyer, United States Congress representative of New York City, United States Treasury auditor and New York City Fire Commissioner
- Dwight Eisenhower – US President
- Jesse E. Eschbach – judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana and a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
- Timothy Geithner – US Secretary of the Treasury
- Dick Gephardt – US Congressman from 1977 to 2005
- James Lawrence Getz – member of the US House of Representatives from Pennsylvania
- William Goebel – controversial politician who served as Governor of Kentucky for a few days in 1900 before being assassinated
- Richard W. Guenther – 19th century politician and pharmacist from Wisconsin
- Charles Godfrey Gunther – Mayor of New York from 1864 until 1866.
- Chuck Hagel – former United States Senator from Nebraska
- William Havemeyer – served three times as the Mayor of New York City: from 1845–1846, 1848–1849 and from 1873 until 1874.
- Julius Heil – Governor of Wisconsin from 1939 to 1943
- Isaac Ellmaker Hiester – political leader in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
- Joseph Hiester – governor of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1823
- William Muhlenberg Hiester – political and military leader in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
- H. John Heinz III – politician from Pennsylvania, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives (1971–1977) and the United States Senate (1977–1991) and son of H. J. Heinz II (heir to the H. J. Heinz Company)
- Herbert Hoover – US President
- Arthur W. Hummel, Jr. – former US Ambassador
- Don Hummel – businessman and politician
- Philip Mayer Kaiser – former US diplomat
- Vera Katz – 45th mayor of Portland, Oregon
- Henry Kissinger – former Secretary of State
- Gustav Körner – Lieutenant Governor of Illinois from 1853 to 1857 and one of the original Forty-Eighter
- Louis Kuehnle – politician; considered a pioneer in the growing resort town of Atlantic City in the late 1880s.
- John Christian Kunkel – former Whig and Republican member of the US House of Representatives from Pennsylvania
- Tom Loeffler – former Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from central Texas
- Richard Lugar – US Senator from Indiana
- Baron Otfried Hans von Meusebach – Prussian bureaucrat, later an American farmer, politician, and member of the Texas Senate
- Frederick Muhlenberg – minister and politician who was the first Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
- Peter Muhlenberg – clergyman, a soldier and a politician of the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Post-Revolutionary eras in Pennsylvania
- Paul Henry Nitze – Presidential Medal of Freedom
- Richard Nixon – American President. He was of English, Irish and German ancestries.
- Barack Obama – American President. His mother, Ann Dunham, has German ancestries that arrived to America in 1750.
- Sarah Palin – former Governor of Alaska, Republican nominee for Vice President in 2008, both parents are of partial German ancestry
- Tim Pawlenty – former Governor of Minnesota, mother was of German descent.
- Horace Porter – decorated Union soldier and diplomat, the son of David Rittenhouse Porter, a wealthy ironmater who later served as Governor of Pennsylvania
- Reince Priebus – chairman of the Republican National Committee and also a previous chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin
- Luke Ravenstahl – Pittsburgh mayor
- Jim Risch – former Governor of Idaho
- Nelson Rockefeller – forty-first Vice President of the United States
- Winthrop Rockefeller – politician and philanthropist who served as the first Republican Governor of Arkansas since Reconstruction
- Brian Roehrkasse – spokesman at the United States Justice Department under the administration of George W. Bush
- Dana Rohrabacher – Republican member of the United States House of Representatives since 1989, currently representing California's 46th congressional district
- Theodore Roosevelt – US President
- Donald Rumsfeld – former Secretary of Defense
- Pierre Salinger – former White House Press Secretary to US Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson who served in the U. S. Senate as a Democrat from California briefly in 1964
- Edward Salomon – Governor of Wisconsin during the Civil War
- Edward S. Salomon – Union brigadier general in the Civil War, later became governor of Washington Territory and a California legislator
- George E. Sangmeister-Senator and Congressman from Illinois. Served in various elected public offices from 1972–1994
- Harry Sauthoff – lawyer, Wisconsin State Senator, also served in the United States House of Representatives
- Gustav Schleicher – US Representative from Texas, serving briefly in Texas legislature and veteran of the Confederate Army
- Solomon Scheu – mayor of Buffalo, New York, in office from January 7, 1878, to January 1880
- Steve Schmidt – campaign strategist
- Adolph H. Schmitz – former Governor of Wisconsin
- Gustav A. Schneebeli – former US Representative from the state of Pennsylvania
- Terry Schrunk – politician who served as the mayor for the city of Portland, Oregon, from 1957–1973
- Mark S. Schweiker – 44th Governor of the Pennsylvania
- Richard Schultz Schweiker – former US Congressman and Senator representing the state of Pennsylvania, later the Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Cabinet of President Ronald Reagan
- John Andrew Shulze – Pennsylvania political leader and 6th Governor of Pennsylvania, a member of the Muhlenberg family political dynasty
- Carl Schurz – statesman and reformer, and Union Army general in the American Civil War
- Emil Seidel – mayor of Milwaukee from 1910 to 1912. He was the first Socialist mayor of a major city in the United States, and ran as the Vice Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America in the 1912 presidential election.
- August Siemering – writer, political leader and Forty-Eighter
- Richard Fred Suhrheinrich – judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
- Jesse Ventura – former Governor of Minnesota (1999–2003), his mother is of Hungarian-German descent
- Ferdinand E. Volz – Mayor of Pittsburgh from 1854 to 1856.
- Robert F. Wagner – New York Senator from 1927 until 1949
- Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. – politician who has served as a US Representative, US Senator, and Governor of Connecticut
- Wendell Willkie – lawyer and the Republican nominee for the 1940 presidential election
- Robert Zoellick – eleventh president of the World Bank, former United States Deputy Secretary of State and US Trade Representative
Read more about this topic: List Of German Americans
Famous quotes containing the word politicians:
“I’ve always wondered why European politicians as a group seemed brighter than American politicians as a group. Maybe it’s because many American politicians have the race issue to fall back on. They become lazy, suspicious of innovative ideas, and as a result American institutions atrophy.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Everyone was tired with the old style politicians and their flowery rhetoric. I just told them there are tough times ahead, but that they would be less tough with me in charge.”
—Anibal Cavaco Silva (b. 1939)