List of Famous people born in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany

Jan Paul van Aken is a German activist for Greenpeace and a politician with the Left Party. He is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in the German Bundestag. Jan van Aken entered the 17th Bundestag in 2009 after he was listed on the Left electoral lists in Hamburg. Since June 2012 he has been a deputy chairperson of the Left Party. He was one of the eight lead candidates for the Left in the 2013 federal election and was therefore also elected to the 18th Bundestag.

Carina Witthöft is a German professional tennis player. Witthöft has won one WTA singles title whereas on the ITF Women's Circuit, she has won eleven singles titles and one doubles title. On 8 January 2018, she reached her best singles ranking of world No. 48.

Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the team which performed nuclear research in Germany during the Second World War, under Werner Heisenberg's leadership. There is ongoing debate as to whether or not he and the other members of the team actively and willingly pursued the development of a nuclear bomb for Germany during this time.

Francisco Copado Álvarez is a Spanish-German retired footballer who played as a striker or midfielder.

Willi Holdorf was a West German athlete.

Norbert Meier is a German former football player, who played as a midfielder, and manager who last managed KFC Uerdingen.

Patrick von Kalckreuth (1892–1970) was a leading German maritime painter. He was born Patrick Dunbar and was the son of a German naval officer. After his father's death, his mother remarried to Richard von Kalckreuth in 1931. Richard von Kalckreuth adopted Patrick and despite being in his 30s, he changed his last name. Thus, early works of von Kalckreuth are signed under the name Patrick Dunbar whereas his paintings after 1931, are signed under the name Kalckreuth. After a brief career as a seaman, von Kalckreuth enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and studied with the German painter Hugo Schnars-Alguist. Von Kalckreuth lived in both Düsseldorf and Berlin, but frequently spent summers along the North Sea in Cuxhaven. His works generally feature scenes from the North Sea, both scenes of waves crashing along beaches and ships at sea. Von Kalckreuth's early works primarily of ships at sea are heavily influenced by Schnars-Alguist. Later in his career, he focused more on the sea itself, frequently painting beautiful seascapes highlighted by crashing waves and sunsets. Considered a master maritime painter, his paintings are displayed in several museums and galleries in Hamburg and in the North of Germany including the Historiches Museum located in Bremerhaven, Germany. Von Kalckreuth died in 1972.

Günther Lützow was a German Luftwaffe aviator and fighter ace credited with 110 enemy aircraft shot down in over 300 combat missions. Apart from five victories during the Spanish Civil War, most of his claimed victories were over the Eastern Front in World War II. He also claimed 20 victories over the Western Front, including two victories—one of which was a four-engined bomber—flying the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter.

Heinz Harro Max Wilhelm Georg Schulze-Boysen was a left-wing German publicist and Luftwaffe officer during World War II. Schulze-Boysen became a leading German resistance fighter as a member of a Berlin anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr. He was arrested and executed in 1942.

Karin Mölling is a German virologist whose research focused on retroviruses, particularly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). She was a full professor and director of the Institute of Medical Virology at the University of Zurich from 1993 to 2008. She is retired but retains affiliations with the University of Zurich and with the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin.