Karl-Wolfgang Zschiesche (14 March 1933 – 29 October 1996) was a German physician and pathologist. He worked as a departmental and then divisional head at the Central Institute of Microbiology and Experimental Therapy (as it was known at the time) between 1962 and 1979. The Institute was a research institution of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin, operating outside the country's universities sector. In 1979 he moved n to the Central Institute for Microbiology, in the Buch quarter on the north side of Berlin, serving as director of the institute between 1981 and 1984.