Gregor Ziemer
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Gregor Athalwin Ziemer (24 May 1899 - August 1982) was an American educator, writer, and correspondent who lived in Germany from 1928 to 1939, during which time he served as the headmaster of the "American School in Berlin." After fleeing Germany, Ziemer returned to his wife Edna's hometown of Lake City, Minnesota. Ziemer wrote a couple of notable books about Nazi society: Education for Death, which inspired the eponymous Disney short and more directly Edward Dmytryk's movie Hitler's Children; and, along with his daughter Patricia, Two Thousand and Ten Days of Hitler.
Ziemer returned to Europe as a correspondent, embedded this time with General George Patton's 3d Army. He provided information to Nuremberg Trial prosecutors about Nazi society.
Ziemer, who lived in California but summered in Lake City, kept busy as a writer of stories and articles and author of screenplays, contributing to the Saturday Evening Post and other popular magazines of the mid 20th century. He later served as a director of the American Foundation for the Blind as well as director of the Institute of Lifetime Learning. Among his key contacts in his charitable work was Hoagy Carmichael.
A manuscript for a book about the history of water skiing was discovered only recently among Ziemer's papers by one of his publishers.
