Marianne Birthler is a German human rights advocate and politician of the Alliance '90/The Greens. From 2000 to 2011, she served as the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records, responsible for investigating the past crimes of the Stasi, the former communist secret police of East Germany. She grew up in East Germany, where she became a member of the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights, which formed part of the resistance to the Soviet-imposed communist regime in the 1980s. She was elected to the only democratically elected People's Chamber in the GDR in March 1990, where she served as spokeswoman of the Alliance 90. From German Reunification on 3 October 1990 until the elections of 2 December 1990, she was a member of the Bundestag, the Parliament of Germany. In October 1990, she became a member of the state parliament of Brandenburg, and in November, she was appointed as Minister for Education in the state government of Manfred Stolpe. She resigned from the parliament in the summer of 1992 and from the cabinet in October the same year. From 1993 to 1994, she was co-spokesperson of the Alliance '90/The Greens. She was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1995. 

January 22nd, 1948 in Berlin (Age 76)