Abstract
Born February 15, 1907, in Essen, Germany, Gerhart Niemeyer was educated at Cambridge (1925–1926), Munich (1926–1927) and Kiel (1927–1930), where he received a J.U.D. in 1932. He left Germany in 1933 and joined friend and mentor Hermann Heller in Madrid, Spain. His career as a teacher began as a lecturer at the University of Madrid in 1933–1934, and assistant professor at the Institute for International and Economic Studies in Madrid in 1934–1936. In 1936, he left Madrid for what was to be a brief vacation. A week later the Spanish Civil War erupted, preventing his return to the Institute. He emigrated to the United States in 1937, becoming a citizen in 1943, and began teaching at Princeton (until 1944) and Oglethorpe (1944–1950). He served as visiting professor at Yale (1942, 1946, 1954–1955), Columbia (1952), Vanderbilt (1962–1966), Maximilian University in Munich (1963), Japan National Defense Academy (1980), and as distinguished visiting professor at Hillsdale College (1976–1992). From 1950 to 1953 he served at the State Department on the planning staff in the Office of United Nations Affairs. It was during this time that he began his long association with William F. Buckley, Jr. Then he served as a research analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1953–1955) and taught for a year (1958–1959) at the National War College. In 1955 he began his long connection with the University of Notre Dame, becoming emeritus in 1976. He served in 1964 as foreign policy advisor for presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. From 1965 to 1968 he was a member of the Republican National Committee's Task Force on Foreign Policy, and in 1981 President Reagan appointed him to the Board of Foreign Scholarships, which elected him chairman.
