List of Famous people born in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany

Martin Luther, was a German professor of theology, priest, author, composer, Augustinian monk, and a seminal figure in the Reformation. Luther was ordained to the priesthood in 1507. He came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church; in particular, he disputed the view on indulgences. Luther proposed an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517. His refusal to renounce all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Holy Roman Emperor.

Jawed Karim is an American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur of Bangladeshi-German descent. He is the co-founder of YouTube and the first person to upload a video to the site. This inaugural video, titled Me at the zoo and uploaded on 23 April 2005, has been viewed over 137.8 million times, as of 25 December 2020. During Karim's time working at PayPal, where he met the fellow YouTube co-founders Steven Chen and Chad Hurley, he had designed many of the core components including its real-time anti-Internet-fraud system.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, writer, and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900.

Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman who masterminded the unification of Germany in 1871 and served as its first chancellor until 1890, in which capacity he dominated European affairs for two decades. He had previously been Minister President of Prussia (1862–1890) and Chancellor of the North German Confederation (1867–1871). He provoked three short, decisive wars, against Denmark, Austria, and France. Following the victory against Austria, he abolished the supranational German Confederation and instead formed the North German Confederation as the first German national state, aligning the smaller North German states behind Prussia, and excluding Austria. Receiving the support of the independent South German states in the Confederation's defeat of France, he formed the German Empire – which also excluded Austria – and united Germany.

Steffi Lemke is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Saxony-Anhalt from 1994 till 2002 and since 2013.

Dieter "Didi" Hallervorden is a German comedian, actor, singer and cabaret artist.

Catharina Margaretha Linck was a Prussian woman who for most of her adult life presented herself as a man. She married a woman and, based on their sexual activity together, was convicted of sodomy and executed by order of King Frederick William I in 1721. Linck's execution was the last for lesbian sexual activity in Europe and an anomaly for its time.

Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a main architect of the Holocaust. He was chief of the Reich Main Security Office. He was also Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. He served as president of the International Criminal Police Commission and chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalised plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe.

Susanne Daubner is a German news and television presenter. She has been part of the Tagesschau news team since 1999. Previously, Daubner had worked for Rundfunk der DDR, DT64 and Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg.

Thomas Müntzer was a German preacher and theologian of the early Reformation whose opposition to both Martin Luther and the Roman Catholic Church led to his open defiance of late-feudal authority in central Germany. Müntzer was foremost amongst those reformers who took issue with Luther's compromises with feudal authority. He became a leader of the German peasant and plebeian uprising of 1525 commonly known as the German Peasants' War. He was captured after the Battle of Frankenhausen, tortured and executed.