Robert Albert Bauer

Born:	08-29-1910
Faculty:	Law School
Category:	Deprivation of academic degree

Robert Albert BAUER (b. August 29^th, 1910 in Vienna/Austria) as the son of Robert Bauer (accounting officer of the Lower Austrian provincial government and army officer, 1885-1918) and Rosa Bauer, née Schwarz (1888-1942), had begun to study economics at the Hochschule für Welthandel in 1929 (1932: "Diplomkaufmann") and at the same time law at the University of Vienna with study visits to Grenoble, Besançon and Geneva. On December 19^th, 1933, he received his doctorate in law from the School of Law and Political Science at the University of Vienna. He became a member of the Academic Association for the League of Nations in 1933 and was a member and propaganda speaker for the Austrofascist Vaterlaendische Front from 1934. From September 1934 to May 1935 he was a trainee lawyer in Vienna, from 1937 to 1938 he worked as a lawyer for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and Trade, and also as a journalist. His last residence was in Vienna's 9^th district, Saeulengasse 21/3. After the National Socialist seizure of power, he had to flee from Austria because he was persecuted for political as well as racial reasons, as he was considered a "Mischling 1. Grades" by the National Socialists. In March 1938 he went to Prague/Czechoslovakia where he joined the "Free Austria Movement" and wrote as a journalist for Die Weltwoche, Zurich, and The New York Times. After the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, he fled in March 1939 via Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy and Switzerland to France, where he lived in Paris from April 1939. He became a member of the Ligue Autrichienne and worked with Martin Fuchs on the attempt to form a recognized Austrian exile representation, but this failed. After the outbreak of war, he founded and directed the Austrian Freedom Radio Station Fécamp in Normandy/France, a camouflage station of the British Expeditionary Corps, on behalf of Martin Fuchs from 1940, and was known as a radio announcer under the code name "Rudolf". After the conquest of France by the Nazi regime, he fled to Portugal, where he married Maria Eva Luisa von Kahler (1919-2002) in Caldas da Rainha on July 14^th, 1940. With his wife, born in Prague/Czechoslovakia in 1919 (daughter of the Viennese industrialist, banker and playwright Felix Ritter von Kahler (1880-1951) and the Prague sculptor Lilli Stein (1888-1953), both of whom also had to emigrate to the USA), interpreter and writer, who also had to flee Vienna in 1938, he emigrated via Canada to the USA, where they both entered on March 13^th, 1941 via Niagara Falls, NY. Robert Bauer's mother was unable to escape Austria in time and was deported from her flat in Vienna's 9^th district, Saeulengasse 21/3 to Maly Trostinec on August 31^st, 1942 and murdered there on September 4^th, 1942. On September 7^th, 1942, the University of Vienna revoked Robert Bauer's doctoral degree, which he had earned in 1933, on racist grounds, since under National Socialism he was considered "as a Jew unworthy of an academic degree from a German university". It was not until 13 years after the revocation and long after the end of National Socialism that the doctoral degree was restored to him on May 13^th, 1955, or the revocation declared "null and void from the beginning". Robert Albert Bauer continued to work in the U.S. as a radio journalist from July 1941 to January 1942, managing the German-language broadcasts of the private shortwave station WLWO in Cincinnati/Ohio and cooperating with Austrian Action under Ferdinand Czernin. From February 1942 he worked for the Office of War Information as editor and radio announcer and was one of the first staff members of Voices from America (later Voice of America, VOA). In 1944 he was head of the German Radio Section of the American Broadcasting Station in Europe in London for a few months. In 1945, his daughter Virginia Rose Bauer-Caesar was born and on June 10^th, 1946, his June 1941 application was granted and he was naturalized and became a U.S. citizen. He continued to work for radio after the war ended, was head of the Austrian Division 1947-1956, and became acting chief of the VOA European Division 1951-1956. In 1953 his son Robert Felix Bauer (later a lawyer) was born and from 1953 he worked for the United States Information Agency (USIA) as radio program manager. In 1956 he joined the U.S. diplomatic service and his work as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer took him to Tehran/Iran as cultural attaché 1958-1960, to Paris/France as information officer 1960-1961, to the Cultural Division of the State Department in Washington 1962-1963, to Cairo/Egypt as embassy counselor 1963-67, where he took classes in Middle East studies and earned an MA in Arab Studies at the American University in Cairo in 1967. 1967-1970 he was Director of the Foreign Press Center USIA, 1970-1972 Cultural Attaché and International Relations Specialist in New Delhi/India. In 1972 he retired as a diplomat, became director of the Kenyon Public Affairs Forum and U.S. representative to the Danube European Institute - Organization for International Economic Relations and correspondent of the West-East JournaI Vienna.
From 1972-1975 he taught as an associate professor of political science at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio/USAand later at the American University in Washington, D.C. and worked as a consultant at the Brookings Institute. He was an honorary member of the Iranian-American Society, a member of the American Academy of Political and Soccil Sciences and the American Political Science Association and the Middle East Institute, edited numerous books, including The U.S. and World Affairs: Leadership, Partnership or Disengagement and the Interaction of Economics and Foreign Policy (University Press of Virginia, 1975), The Austrian Solution: International Conflict and Cooperation (Charlottesville 1982), and The Threat of International Terrorism (with Gifford Malone and Sheila Muccio. Oceana Publications, 1988) and was awarded the Meritorious Service Award of the U.S. Government and the Medal of Honor for Services to the Liberation of Austria in 1980. He died in Washington D.C./USA on September 27^th, 2003 at the age of 93.

Lit: Archive of the University of Vienna/graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") IUR 1924-1939 No. 2924, Rektorat GZ 118 ex 1941/42 ONr. 148, 171, GZ 561 ex 1944/45 ONr. 15; Deutscher Reichsanzeiger No. 87 of April 15^th, 1942 (expatriation); Deutscher Reichsanzeiger No. 213 of September 11^th, 1942 (doctoral degree recognition); POSCH 2009, 390; RÖDER 1980, 40; GAUGUSCH 2011, 1300; www.ancestry.de.

Herbert Posch