BAUER, Robert A(lbert) 1910-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born August 29, 1910, in Vienna, Austria; died of a stroke September 27, 2003, in Washington, DC. Diplomat, journalist, educator, and author. Bauer is often remembered for his work in the U.S. Foreign Service as a public and cultural affairs officer. An Austrian native, he graduated from Economic University in Vienna in 1932 with a master's and earned his law degree at the University of Vienna in 1933. Admitted to the Austrian bar in 1933, he was a lawyer in Vienna during the 1930s. But when Germany annexed Austria in 1938, he fled to Prague to become a reporter for the New York Times office there. After working briefly as chief of the Austrian Freedom Broadcasting Station in France in 1940, Bauer managed to emigrate to the United States, where he joined Cincinnati radio station WLWO in 1940, and in 1942 he joined the Voice of America; in 1944, he was made chief of the German radio section at the American Broadcasting Station in Europe. Bauer remained at Voice of America until 1958, when he joined the U.S. Department of State's Foreign Service office. While there, he held several positions, including director of the Tehran, Iran, office from 1958 to 1960, cultural attaché in Paris from 1960 to 1961, secretary of cultural affairs and then counselor for public affairs at the American embassy in Cairo, Egypt, during the mid-1960s, and cultural attaché and international relations specialist at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, India, from 1967 to 1972. When not working abroad, he held posts in Washington, D.C., and from 1967 to 1971 was director of the U.S. Information Agency Foreign Press Center. Bauer left his foreign service job in 1972 to become a correspondent for the West-Ost Journal, and he also taught at Kenyon College as an adjunct professor. While at Kenyon, Bauer became director of the public affairs forum from 1972 to 1979. Toward the end of his career, he served as a consultant to the Brookings Institute from 1983 to 1988 and was program advisor and project director at the Dacor Bacon House Foundation in Washington, D.C., beginning in 1988. Bauer was the editor of several books, including The United States in World Affairs: Leadership, Partnership, or Disengagement? (1975), The Interaction of Economics and Foreign Policy (1975), The Austrian Solution: International Conflict and Cooperation (1982), and, as coeditor, The Threat of International Terrorism (1988).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Washington Post, October 2, 2003, p. B7.