Some of the founding members brought experiences of previous similar organizations with them, such as the Lutetia-Kreis.
The chairman was Paul Tillich, a Protestant theologian at the Union Theological Seminary in New York.
No other exile organization brought together a similarly wide spectrum of figures in politics and the arts.
The section of the memorandum discussing health policy was largely written by Käte Frankenthal, Felix Boenheim, and Kurt Glaser[1] The 19 members of the founding committee were: Elisabeth Hauptmann functioned as "Executive secretary".
He also felt that the CDG should adopt a more critical approach to their home country, and to the crimes committed by Germans.