Germany

Capital Bra

Germany's rap king, born in Soviet 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

Soviet roots, German glory: tennis's quiet giant

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

Berlin-born singer with a Russian mother who became the world's most famous interpreter of Russian folk songs

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

Born in St. Petersburg, became Nietzsche's muse, Rilke's lover, and Freud's first female psychoanalyst

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 with Russian Imperial connections — won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and founded terpene chemistry

Rashid Sunyaev

Born in Tashkent — the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect bears his name, and he is one of the greatest living astrophysicists

Rosa Luxemburg

Born in the Russian Empire's Polish territories — the most important female revolutionary thinker of the 20th century

Svetlana Alexievich

Born in Stanislaviv (Ukraine) — Nobel Prize-winning voice of the Soviet catastrophe and its survivors

Tatjana Maria

Russian-born German tennis player who reached the 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

Born in Dushanbe — the satirist who wrote The Life and Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin and mocked the Soviet system to its face

Volker Beck

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 Manin

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 actor who became a major German TV star and a passionate advocate for Ukraine

Ekaterina Leonova

Russian ballroom champion who won Let's Dance and became one of Germany's most beloved TV personalities

Olga Grjasnova

Born in Baku, writes in German — one of Germany's most acclaimed young novelists

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

Ukrainian-born German rapper with millions of streams — one of Germany's authentic Russian-speaking hip-hop voices

Arseniy Vershinin

Grew up in a small Siberian town, studied nuclear physics in Moscow — then co-founded Personio, Germany's $6B HR tech giant