Archives West Finding Aid

Gregor Ziemer (1899-1982) was a journalist, educator, and writer during the twentieth century. He was born in Michigan and educated at the University of Illinois. From 1926 to 1928, Ziemer worked at an English language school in the Philippines. He served as a foreign correspondent for the "Chicago Tribune" in Germany from 1928 to 1940. During this time, he was also headmaster of the American School in Berlin. After returning to the United States in 1940, Ziemer was a news broadcaster for WLW Radio in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he reported on the progress of World War II in Europe. He returned to Europe in 1944 as a war correspondent, working as a broadcaster first for Radio Luxembourg, then for Voice of America. In 1945, he served as an embedded war correspondent with the U.S. Army's Fourth Armored Division in Germany. Ziemer later turned his attention to educational matters, serving as Director of Public Education for the American Foundation for the Blind from 1952 to 1964. From the mid 1960s to the 1970s, he was Director of the Institute of Lifetime Learning. In addition to his work as a journalist and educator, Ziemer wrote a number of newspaper articles, magazine articles and short stories. He was also the author of several books between the 1940s and 1970s. Ziemer's experiences in Nazi Germany directly provided the inspiration for the World War II propaganda film "Hitler's Children" (1943).