Klemens von Klemperer (1916–2012)

Klemens von Klemperer was born to a secular Jewish family in Berlin, Germany, that had converted to Lutheranism. He had a privileged childhood as one of four children of Herbert and Frieda (née Kuffner) von Klemperer. His father was the president of Berliner Maschinenbau-AG (BMAG), a company that manufactured locomotives, submarines and torpedoes for the German military, and his paternal grandfather Gustav Klemperer von Klemenau was chairman of the Dresdner Bank.
Klemens was educated at the Französisches Gymnasium, and after graduating in 1934, was sent by his father to Oxford University. However, after only two weeks, he left Oxford and made his way to Vienna, enrolling at the University of Vienna, where he studied the history of law. After the German annexation of Austria in 1938, he became one of the prominent anti-Nazi student leaders in Vienna. After his family's property was seized by the Nazis, he fled to the USA, while his parents took refuge in the UK. Other members of the family died in the Holocaust. Klemens was accepted at Harvard University as one of 14 students who were part of President Roosevelt's initiative to support refugee scholars.

After the war, he returned to Harvard and obtained his PhD in history in 1949. He went on to teach at Smith College for nearly 40 years. He officially retired in 1987, but continued to teach at Amherst College and the University of Massachusetts.
He was a visiting fellow at Cambridge University and at Oxford, as well as at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. Professor von Klemperer published eight books and numerous scholarly articles, specializing in the Nazi period in German history. His most acclaimed work was German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945 (1992). In 2009, he published his memoirs, Voyage through the 20th Century.