EXTREMISTS from Germany

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary German Extremists of all time. This list of famous German Extremists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography's online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of German Extremists.

1. Frederick Trump (1869 - 1918)

With an HPI of 76.82, Frederick Trump is the most famous German Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 26 different languages on wikipedia.

Frederick Trump (born Friedrich Trump; German: [fʁi:dʁɪç tʁʊmp]; March 14, 1869 – May 30, 1918) was a German-American businessman. He was the patriarch of the Trump family and the paternal grandfather of the 45th and 47th U.S. president, Donald Trump. Born and raised in Kallstadt, Germany, in what was then the Kingdom of Bavaria, Trump immigrated to the United States in 1885. In 1891, he began speculating in real estate in Seattle. During the Klondike Gold Rush, he moved to the Yukon and made his fortune by operating a restaurant and a brothel for miners in Whitehorse. In 1901, Trump returned to Kallstadt and married Elisabeth Christ. As he had failed to complete mandatory military service and notify the authorities of his departure in 1885, the Bavarian government stripped him of his citizenship in 1905 and ordered him to leave. Consequently, he returned to the United States with his family. Trump worked as a barber and manager of a restaurant-hotel and was beginning to acquire real estate in Queens when he died in the 1918 flu pandemic.

2. Ulrike Meinhof (1934 - 1976)

With an HPI of 72.04, Ulrike Meinhof is the 2nd most famous German Extremist.  Her biography has been translated into 49 different languages.

Ulrike Marie Meinhof (7 October 1934 – 9 May 1976) was a German left-wing militant, journalist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany, commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the reputed author of The Urban Guerilla Concept (1971). The manifesto acknowledges the RAF's "roots in the history of the student movement"; condemns "reformism" as "a brake on the anti-capitalist struggle"; and invokes Mao Zedong to define "armed struggle" as "the highest form of Marxism-Leninism". Meinhof, who took part in the RAF's "May Offensive" in 1972, was arrested that June and spent the rest of her life in custody, largely isolated from outside contact. In November 1974, she was sentenced to 8 years in prison for complicity in a near-fatal shooting in what had been her first RAF operation, the successful jailbreak of Andreas Baader in 1970. From 1975, with Baader and two other RAF leaders, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe, she stood trial on further charges of murder and attempted murder. Before the end of the trial, she was found hanged in her cell in the Stammheim Prison. The official finding of suicide sparked controversy, with her sister, Wienke Zitzlaff, stating that Meinhof had told her only days before her death: "You can stand up and fight only while you are alive. If they say I committed suicide, be sure that it was murder." One year later, on 7 April 1977, two members of the RAF assassinated the Federal Attorney-General Siegfried Buback as revenge.

3. Otto Ohlendorf (1907 - 1951)

With an HPI of 69.56, Otto Ohlendorf is the 3rd most famous German Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 28 different languages.

Otto Ohlendorf (German pronunciation: [ˈɔtoː ˈʔoːləndɔʁf]; 4 February 1907 – 7 June 1951) was a German SS functionary and Holocaust perpetrator during the Nazi era. An economist by education, he was head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) Inland, responsible for intelligence and security within Germany. In 1941, Ohlendorf was appointed the commander of Einsatzgruppe D, which perpetrated mass murder in Moldova, south Ukraine, the Crimea and, during 1942, the North Caucasus. He was tried at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging in 1951.

4. Andreas Baader (1943 - 1977)

With an HPI of 69.54, Andreas Baader is the 4th most famous German Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 38 different languages.

Berndt Andreas Baader (6 May 1943 – 18 October 1977) was a West German communist and leader of the far-left terrorist organization Red Army Faction (RAF), also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group.

5. Peter Kürten (1883 - 1931)

With an HPI of 69.46, Peter Kürten is the 5th most famous German Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.

Peter Kürten (German: [ˈpeːtɐ ˈkʏʁtn̩]; 26 May 1883 – 2 July 1931) was a German serial killer, known as The Vampire of Düsseldorf and the Düsseldorf Monster, who committed a series of murders and sexual assaults between February and November 1929 in the city of Düsseldorf. In the years before these assaults and murders, Kürten had amassed a lengthy criminal record for offences including arson and attempted murder. He also confessed to the 1913 murder of a nine-year-old girl in Mülheim am Rhein and the attempted murder of a 17-year-old girl in Düsseldorf. Described by Karl Berg as "the king of the sexual perverts", Kürten was found guilty of nine counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder for which he was sentenced to death by beheading in April 1931. He was executed via guillotine in July 1931, at age 48. Kürten became known as the "Vampire of Düsseldorf" because he occasionally made attempts to drink the blood from his victims' wounds; and the "Düsseldorf Monster" both because the majority of his murders were committed in and around the city of Düsseldorf, and due to the savagery he inflicted upon his victims' bodies.

6. Friedrich Jeckeln (1895 - 1946)

With an HPI of 67.94, Friedrich Jeckeln is the 6th most famous German Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Friedrich August Jeckeln (2 February 1895 – 3 February 1946) was a German Nazi Party member, police official and SS-Obergruppenführer during the Nazi era. He served as a Higher SS and Police Leader in Germany and in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II. Jeckeln was the commander of one of the largest groups of Einsatzgruppen death squads and was personally responsible for ordering and organising the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, Romani and others designated by the Nazis as "undesirables". After the end of the war in Europe, Jeckeln was convicted of war crimes by a Soviet military tribunal in Riga and executed by hanging.

7. Fritz Haarmann (1879 - 1925)

With an HPI of 67.43, Fritz Haarmann is the 7th most famous German Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 24 different languages.

Friedrich Heinrich Karl "Fritz" Haarmann (25 October 1879 – 15 April 1925) was a German serial rapist and serial killer, known as the Butcher of Hanover, the Vampire of Hanover and the Wolf Man, who committed the sexual assault, murder, mutilation and dismemberment of at least twenty-four young men and boys in the city of Hanover between 1918 and 1924. Found guilty of twenty-four of the twenty-seven murders for which he was tried, Haarmann was sentenced to death by beheading in December 1924. He was subsequently executed by guillotine in April 1925. Haarmann became known as the Butcher of Hanover (German: Der Schlächter von Hannover) due to the extensive mutilation and dismemberment committed upon his victims' bodies, and by such titles as the Vampire of Hanover (der Vampir von Hannover) and the Wolf Man (Wolfsmensch) because of his preferred murder method of biting into or through his victims' throats.

8. Gudrun Ensslin (1940 - 1977)

With an HPI of 66.41, Gudrun Ensslin is the 8th most famous German Extremist.  Her biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Gudrun Ensslin (German: [ˈɡuːdʁuːn ˈɛnsliːn]; 15 August 1940 – 18 October 1977) was a German far-left terrorist and founder of the West German far-left militant group Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion, or RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang). After becoming involved with co-founder Andreas Baader, Ensslin was influential in the development of his political beliefs. Ensslin was perhaps the intellectual head of the RAF. She was involved in five bomb attacks, with four deaths, was arrested in 1972 and died on 18 October 1977 in what has been called Stammheim Prison's "Death Night".

9. Fritz Honka (1935 - 1998)

With an HPI of 66.02, Fritz Honka is the 9th most famous German Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.

Friedrich Paul "Fritz" Honka (31 July 1935 – 19 October 1998) was a German serial killer. Between 1970 and 1975 he killed at least four women from Hamburg's red light district, keeping three of the bodies in his flat.

10. Willi Herold (1925 - 1946)

With an HPI of 65.50, Willi Herold is the 10th most famous German Extremist.  His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Willi Herold (11 September 1925 – 14 November 1946), also known as the Executioner of Emsland, was a Nazi German war criminal. Near the end of the Second World War in Europe, Herold deserted from the Luftwaffe and, posing as a captain, organized the mass execution of German deserters held at a prison camp. He was arrested by British forces and executed for war crimes on 14 November 1946 at Wolfenbüttel Prison.