Famous and Not-So-Famous Americans of German, Austrian, or German-Swiss Ancestry

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North Americans of German, Austrian, or German-Swiss heritage have made significant contributions to many fields of American culture, from the arts to science and engineering. Below is an alphabetical list of notable Americans and Canadians, both living and dead, who were born in German-speaking Europe or had Germanic ancestors. All persons listed have at least a summary. For some personalties you can click on a link to learn even more. This list also includes Austrian and Swiss-Americans.

Also see: German-American Day – October 6

The American film actress Grace Kelly (1929-1982), later Princess Grace of Monaco, had German roots on her mother’s side (Majer). Learn more below. PHOTO: MGM

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Janson, Klaus (1952- ) | Klaus Janson is a German-born American award-winning comics artist who has worked for Marvel Comics and DC Comics. While he is best known as an inker, Janson has frequently worked as a penciller and colorist. Janson was born in Coburg in the Upper Franconia region of Bavaria on January 30, 1952. He was only five when his family emigrated to the USA in 1957. In the early 1970s Janson began working at Marvel. Jungle Action, Sept. 1973 was his first credited comic art. He later became known for his work on Batman: The Dark Knight and Daredevil.

Jolie, Angelina (1975- ) | Born Angelina Jolie Voight on June 4, 1975 in Los Angeles, Jolie is the daughter of actor Jon Voight and actress Marcheline Bertrand (1950-2007). (Her older brother, James Haven Voight, was also a child of that marriage.) Angelina Jolie is an award-winning American film actress, filmmaker, and a noted human rights activist. She is of partial German ancestry (details below). Jolie serves as Special Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (since 2012). She made her screen debut as a child alongside her father in Lookin’ to Get Out (1982). Jolie is divorced from actors Jonny Lee Miller, Billy Bob Thornton, and Brad Pitt. She and Pitt have six children together, three of whom were adopted internationally. Her starring role as the video game heroine Lara Croft in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) established her as a leading Hollywood actress. Jolie’s father is of Slovak and German heritage. Her maternal grandmother, Lois June Gouwens, was of Dutch and German ancestry, with a trace of Huron ancestry. Bertrand’s father (Angelina’s maternal grandfather) was of French-Canadian descent. Jolie has had a lifelong dysfunctional relationship with her father, which began when Voight left the family when his daughter was less than a year old. Jon Voight’s paternal grandfather and his paternal grandmother’s parents were Slovak immigrants, while his maternal grandfather and his maternal grandmother’s parents were German immigrants. Jon Voight is the son of Barbara (née Kamp; 1910–1995) and Elmer Voight (Voytka, 1909–1973).

Joy, Leatrice (Leatrice Johanna Zeidler, 1893-1985) | Leatrice Joy was an American actress during the silent film era. Joy was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to dentist Edward Joseph Zeidler, who was of Austrian and French descent, and Mary Joy Crimens Zeidler, who was of German and Irish heritage. After a high degree of success in silent pictures, the advent of sound became a problem for Joy, possibly because of her Southern accent. Joy was briefly married to actor John Gilbert (1922-1925), with whom she had a daughter. She was married two more times after that. Both marriages ended in divorce. Leatrice Joy has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6517 Hollywood Blvd.

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Kaiser, Henry J. (1882-1967) | Henry John Kaiser was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. He established the Kaiser Shipyards, which built Liberty ships during World War II, after which he formed Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel. Kaiser organized Kaiser Permanente health care for his workers and their families. He led the Kaiser-Frazer automobile firm, followed by Kaiser Motors. Both companies were known for the safety of their car designs. Henry J. Kaiser was born on May 9, 1882 in Sprout Brook, New York, the son of Franz and Anna Marie (née Yops) Kaiser, ethnic German immigrants. His father was a shoemaker. Kaiser’s first job was as a cash boy in a Utica, New York, department store at the age of 16. He worked as an apprentice photographer early in life, and was running a photo studio in Lake Placid by the age of 20. In order to prove he could support his future wife, Bess Fosburgh, Kaiser moved to Spokane and became a top salesman at a hardware company, returning ten months later with enough money to placate his future father-in-law. The couple married in 1907 and had two sons. By 1914 Kaiser was running a paving company and soon expanded into road and dam construction. With the outbreak of war in 1941, the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California (in the San Francisco Bay Area) fought Hitler by building ships in record time for the navy. These “Liberty ships” were later replaced by larger “Victory ships.” Kaiser became famous for building a ship in only four days! Based for many years in Oakland, California, Kaiser moved to Hawaii in 1955 to develop real estate there. Today’s Hilton Hawaiian Village resort in Honolulu began life as the Kaiser Hawaiian Village Hotel. Kaiser also developed the suburban community of Hawaiʻi Kai on Oahu. On August 24, 1967, Kaiser died at the age of 85 in Honolulu. He is interred in Mountain View Cemetery in the Main Mausoleum, in Oakland, California.

Kalb / de Kalb / von Kalb, Johann (1721-1780) | Born as Johann Kalb in Hüttendorf (now part of Erlangen) in what is today northern Bavaria, the man who was later known primarily as Baron de Kalb in the New World was not born into nobility, as the “von” or “de” before his surname would indicate. Johann Kalb was born into a Franconian merchant family. His father was Johann Leonhard Kalb, and his mother was Margarethe Seiz. The future American Revolutionary War hero added the “de” to his name while serving as a military officer for the French beginning in 1743. In 1764, he retired from the army and married Anna Elizabeth Emilie van Robais, an heiress to a fortune from cloth manufacturing. The marriage gave de Kalb a legitimate claim to nobility. He bought the Milon-la-Chapelle chateau in France and fathered three children with Anna. In 1768 de Kalb made his first trip to America on a covert mission to assess the level of discontent among the colonists there. He was impressed with their independent spirit. He returned to America in 1777, this time with the Marquis de Lafayette, and joined the Continental Army. He almost returned to France after learning he would not be granted the rank of major general, but Lafayette intervened on his behalf. De Kalb served at Valley Forge during the bitter 1777-1778 winter, commanding a division of American troops. Later he was sent south to the Carolinas, in command of reinforcements to help drive off the British. Through no fault of his own, the 1780 Battle of Camden (in South Carolina) turned into a disaster. De Kalb’s horse was shot from under him, causing him to tumble to the ground. Before he could get up, he was shot three times and bayonetted repeatedly by British soldiers. He died three days later and was buried in Camden. De Kalb was greatly revered by his contemporaries. Numerous towns, counties, and streets in the US are named after him, usually as DeKalb. In Erlangen, Germany the Johann-Kalb-Straße has honored his name since 1955.

Kelly, Grace (1929-1982) | Grace Kelly (Grace Patricia Kelly) was an American actress whose film career (1951-1956) ended when she married Prince Rainier III to become Princess Grace of Monaco. Kelly’s mother, Margaret Katherine Majer (1898-1990) was the daughter of German immigrants, Carl Majer (1863-1922) and Margaretha Berg (1870-1949). Her Irish-American father, John B. Kelly Sr., came from an affluent Philadelphia family. Grace grew up in a strict Irish Catholic household, with a distant, anti-Semitic father and a physically abusive mother. Grace Kelly appeared in these Hollywood films: High Noon (1952), with Gary Cooper; High Society (1956), with Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra; and three Alfred Hitchcock films: Dial M for Murder (1954), with Ray Milland; Rear Window (1954), with James Stewart; and To Catch a Thief (1955), with Cary Grant. Her appearance in John Ford’s Mogambo, starring Clark Gable and Ava Gardner, won her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination in 1954. Although she quit making films when she was only 26, Grace Kelly is listed 13th among the American Film Institute’s 25 Greatest Female Stars of Classical Hollywood Cinema. She had three children with Prince Rainier: Caroline, Albert, and Stéphanie. Princess Grace died on September 14, 1982, succumbing to injuries sustained in a car crash the day before. She was driving back to Monaco with her daughter Stéphanie when she lost control of her Rover P6 3500 and went off a 120-foot mountainside. Doctors believed that she suffered a mild stroke before the accident. Stéphanie survived the crash with serious injuries.

Kilcher, Q’orianka (1990- ) | Q’orianka Waira Qoiana Kilcher is an American film and television actress and singer, of part Swiss-German descent; Kilcher was born in Schweigmatt, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, but she grew up in Hawaii (Kapa’a, Maui) and later in the Los Angeles area. Her estranged father is of Quechua-Huachipaeri descent from Peru. Her mother, Saskia Kilcher (Saskia Genet-Oulicky), is a film producer and human rights activist of Swiss-German descent, born in Alaska and raised in Switzerland. The founding patriarch of the Kilcher family in Homer, Alaska, Yule Kilcher, was a member of the Alaska Senate and delegate to the Alaskan constitutional conference who was originally from Switzerland. Kilcher’s maternal grandfather was Ray “Pirate” Genet (1931-1979), a Swiss-born mountaineer who later immigrated to America. When she was 14, Q’orianka Kilcher portrayed Pocahontas in the Academy Award-nominated, British-American film The New World (2005), co-starring Colin Farrell and Christian Bale. She also appeared with Bale in Hostiles (2017), as Elk Woman, Black Hawk’s wife. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Kilcher has been an activist for environmental and other social issues. Her name Q’orianka means “Golden Eagle” in Quechua.
WEB: Another Family Star: Q’orianka Kilcher, cousin of singer Jewel, portrays Pocahontas in major Hollywood film by Tom Kizzia, Anchorage Daily News (Nov. 2004)

Kimmel, Jimmy (1967-) | James “Jimmy” Christian Kimmel (originally the German surname Kümmel) is an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. His late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” premiered on ABC in January 2003. Born in Brooklyn, New York on November 13, 1967, Kimmel and his siblings were raised Catholic. When he was nine, the family moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where he attended high school and UNLV. Two of Kimmel’s paternal great-great-grandparents were German immigrants. His great-great-grandfather’s name was Konrad Heinrich Christian Kümmel. (Kümmel is German for caraway seed and the caraway-flavored liqueur.) His mother, Joan Iacono, is of Italian ancestry from the volcanic island of Ischia, about 30 miles offshore from Naples. Her family migrated to the United States following an 1883 earthquake on the island. Ischia is now a popular vacation spot for Germans, including Angela Merkel, the German chancellor.

Kissinger, Henry (1923- ) | Henry Alfred Kissinger is a German American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Born in Fürth, Germany, Kissinger was a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938. He became National Security Advisor in 1969 and U.S. Secretary of State in 1973. (More about Kissinger coming soon.)

Knievel, Evel (1938-2007) | Robert Craig Knievel, professionally known as Evel Knievel, was an American stunt performer and entertainer. Knievel was born on October 17, 1938, in Butte, Montana, the first of two children of Robert E. and Ann Marie Keough Knievel. The Knievel surname is of German origin. His paternal great-great-grandparents emigrated to the US from Germany. His mother was of Irish ancestry. Robert and Ann divorced in 1940, after the 1939 birth of their second child, Nicolas, known as Nic. Both parents decided to leave Butte, and Knievel and his brother were raised in there by their paternal grandparents, Ignatius and Emma Knievel. At the age of eight, Knievel attended an auto daredevil show, to which he gave credit for his later career choice as a motorcycle daredevil. Knievel was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999. He died of pulmonary disease in Clearwater, Florida, on November 7, 2007, aged 69.

Kracauer, Siegfried (1889-1966) | Siegfried Kracauer was a noted German-American, Jewish film historian/critic, journalist, sociologist, and author. Born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, Kracauer originally studied architecture and engineering, and worked as an architect in Osnabrück, Munich, and Berlin until 1920. From 1922 to 1933 he turned to journalism, working for the leading newspaper in Frankfurt, the Frankfurter Zeitung, serving as the paper’s leading film and literature editor. During this period Kracauer developed theoretical methods for analyzing circuses, photography, films, advertising, tourism, city layout, and dance, which he published in 1927 as Ornament der Masse (published as The Mass Ornament in English). In 1930 Kracauer moved to Berlin to work in the offices of the Frankfurter Zeitung there. He and his new wife, Lili Ehrenreich, lived in an apartment in Charlottenburg (Sybelstraße 35) from 1931 to 1933. Following the Reichstag fire in February 1933, the Jewish Kracauer migrated with his wife to Paris. He was briefly imprisoned in France after the outbreak of war in 1939. In March 1941, with the help of the Emergency Rescue Committee, he and Lili emigrated via Lisbon to the United States, with other German refugees. In America he worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (1941-1943), supported by Guggenheim and Rockefeller scholarships for his work in German film. In 1947, he published From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, his best known work, which traces the birth of Nazism from the cinema of the Weimar Republic as well as helping lay the foundation of modern film criticism.

Dianne Kruger at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival PHOTO: Georges Biard (Wikimedia Commons)

Kruger, Diane (Diane Heidkrüger, 1976- ) | Diane Kruger (or Krüger) was born on July 15, 1976 in Algermissen, West Germany (near Hildesheim). The German-American actress has played roles in German and Hollywood films. She is fluent in her native German and two other languages: English and French. Most of her films have been in French or English. Kruger became a US citizen in 2013, but she still has German citizenship. She began her career as a model in Germany before branching out into acting. Her international breakthrough came in 2004 when she played Helen of Troy in Troy, a Hollywood production directed by the German Wolfgang Petersen. Some of her best-known films include National Treasure (2004), Joyeux Noël (2005), National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), and Welcome to Marwen (2018). She has been nominated for and won various professional honors, including a 2010 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture (Inglourious Basterds).

Klemperer, Werner (1920-2000) | Werner Klemperer was a German-American stage entertainer, actor, and singer. He was best known for the role of Colonel Wilhelm Klink on the CBS television sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” (1965-1971, 168 episodes). Born in Cologne, Germany to a musical family, Klemperer claimed that he had little musical aptitude. His father was renowned conductor Otto Klemperer and his mother was soprano Johanna Geisler. The family emigrated to the United States in 1935, settling in Los Angeles, where Otto Klemperer became conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Werner Klemperer began acting in high school and enrolled in acting courses at the Pasadena Playhouse before joining the United States Army to serve in World War II. Stationed in Hawaii, he joined the Army’s Special Services unit, spending the next years touring the Pacific entertaining the troops. At the war’s end, he performed on Broadway before moving into television acting. Klemperer’s first major film role was as a psychiatrist in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956). He also played roles in various television series and feature films, but he is most famous for his role as the bumbling, arrogant, and self-serving Kommandant of Stalag 13, Colonel Klink. In 1997, Klemperer married his third wife, television actress Kim Hamilton. After many years as a film and stage actor, Klemperer died of cancer at his home in Manhattan on December 6, 2000, at the age of 80. His ashes were scattered at sea.

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Veronica Lake in a 1943 publicity photo. PHOTO: Paramount Pictures

Lake, Veronica (1922-1973) | Veronica Lake (born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman) was an American film, stage, and television actor. Lake was best known for her femme fatale roles in film noirs with Alan Ladd during the 1940s and her blonde peek-a-boo hairstyle. She was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Her father, Harry Eugene Ockelman, was of German and Irish descent. He died in an industrial explosion in Philadelphia in 1932. Lake’s mother, Constance Frances Charlotta (née Trimble; 1902–1992), of Irish descent, married Anthony Keane, a newspaper staff artist, in 1933, and Lake began using his surname (Constance Keane). In 1938 the Keane family moved to Beverly Hills, California, where young Constance was briefly under contract to MGM. She got her first big break – and her new screen name – when producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. was looking for a new face for the part of a nightclub singer in a military drama, I Wanted Wings (1940). The role would make Lake, still in her teens, a star. According to Hornblow, Veronica’s eyes, “calm and clear like a blue lake,” were the inspiration for her new name. It was also in that film that Lake accidentally developed her trademark look. By chance Lake’s long blonde hair fell over her right eye during a take and created a “peek-a-boo” effect. Lake’s first starring role, opposite Joel McCrea, was in Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels (1941), now considered a classic film. Following a series of poor films, Lake recovered by making several film noirs with Alan Ladd and other male stars, one of the most notable (with Ladd) being The Blue Dahlia (1946), with an original screenplay by Raymond Chandler. But Lake was an alcoholic and had a reputation for being “difficult” on set. She soon left Paramount for 20th Century Fox, but her career was fading by the early 1950s. She made her last (self-financed) film in 1970, a low-budget horror flick entitled Flesh Feast, complete with Nazi scientists. Lake was married and divorced three times. She rarely saw her three children. While traveling in Vermont in June 1973, she went to a local doctor complaining about stomach pains. The doctor told her she had cirrhosis of the liver. On July 7, 1973 she died of acute hepatitis and acute kidney injury. She was only 50 years old. Her ashes were scattered off the coast of the Virgin Islands, as she requested.

Lange, Jessica (1949- ) | Lange was born in Cloquet, Minnesota, on April 20, 1949. Her father, Albert John Lange (1913–1989), was a teacher and traveling salesman, and her mother, Dorothy Florence (née Sahlman; 1913–1998), was a housewife. She has two older sisters, Jane and Ann, and a younger brother named George. Her paternal ancestry originates in Germany and the Netherlands, while her maternal ancestry originates in Finland. While modeling in New York, Lange was discovered by Hollywood producer Dino De Laurentiis, who was looking to cast his next leading lady, an ingenue for his remake of the 1933 King Kong. Lange made her film debut in the 1976 King Kong, supposedly beating actresses Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn for the role of damsel-in-distress.

Lauper, Cyndi (Cynthia Lauper Thornton, 1953- ) | Born Cynthia Ann Stephanie Lauper on June 22, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York City, Cyndi’s father, Fred Lauper, was of German and Swiss descent. Her Catholic mother, Catrine Lauper (née Gallo, 1930-2022), was of Sicilian descent. She appeared in the “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” music video, as well as other Lauper videos. Cyndi announced the passing of her mother in June 2022 at the age of 91. Lauper has a younger brother, Fred (“Butch”), and an older sister, Ellen. Her parents divorced when she was five. Cyndi Lauper is a singer, songwriter, actress, and LGBTQ activist who has sold over 50 million records worldwide, and has won many awards, including Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, MTV Video Music Awards, Billboard Awards, and American Music Awards. Her 1983 album She’s So Unusual was the first debut album by a female artist to achieve four top-five hits on the Billboard Hot 100 (“Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Time After Time,” “She Bop,” and “All Through the Night”). For this album Lauper received the Best New Artist award at the 27th Annual Grammy Awards in 1985. She followed that with the soundtrack for the motion picture The Goonies and her second album True Colors (1986) that included the number one single “True Colors” and “Change of Heart,” which peaked at number three. In 1989 she had another big hit with “I Drove All Night.” Lauper married actor David Thornton in 1991. They have a son, Declyn “Dex” Wallace Thornton Lauper (b. 1997). Lauper has openly discussed her psoriasis, including in TV advertisements for Cosentyx. In 2012 Lauper published Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir, co-written with Jancee Dunn. Lauper is known for her distinctive image, featuring a variety of hair colors and eccentric clothing, and for her powerful and distinctive four-octave singing range. MORE: CyndiLauper.com – Official site

Leutze, Emanuel (1816-1868) | Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze was a German American artist best known for his historical oil painting of “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” Emanuel Leutze was born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Württemberg, Germany, and was brought to the United States as a child. His parents settled first in Fredericksburg, Virginia and then in Philadelphia. Following the death of his father in 1831, 15-year-old Leutze made a living by painting portraits for $5.00. He received his first formal art instruction in 1834. By the early 1840s he had earned enough money to go to Europe for further art training in Düsseldorf and Munich. In 1843 Leutze visited Venice and Rome to do studies from Titian and Michelangelo. He painted “Washington Crossing the Delaware” while in Europe. Reacting to the European revolutions of 1848, Leutze wanted to create a painting to inspire liberal reformers with the American example. He completed his first version of the Washington painting in 1850. It was damaged by a studio fire, restored and acquired by the Kunsthalle Bremen. (That original version was destroyed in a 1942 Allied bombing raid.) The second painting, a copy of the first, was ordered by a Parisian art trader in 1850, and is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In 1859 Leutze returned to the United States and opened a studio in New York City. That same year he painted a portrait of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney which now hangs in the Harvard Law School. In 1860 Leutze was commissioned by the U.S. Congress to decorate a stairway in the Capitol Building in Washington, for which he painted a large composition, “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” commonly known simply as “Westward Ho!” In 1868, at the age of 52, Leutze died in Washington, D.C. of heatstroke. His grave is in Washington’s Glenwood Cemetery.

Painted in Germany, Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 depiction of Washington’s attack on the Hessians at Trenton on the morning of December 26, 1776, was a great success in the United States and Germany. PHOTO: Metropolitan Museum of Art (Wikimedia Commons)

Ley, Willy (1906-1969) | Willy Otto Oskar Ley was a German-American science writer and proponent of cryptozoology, a pseudoscience. The crater Ley on the far side of the moon is named in his honor. Ley was born in Berlin on October 2, 1906. He was the son of Julius Otto Ley, a traveling merchant, and Frida May, the daughter of a Lutheran sexton. After studying astronomy, physics, zoology, and paleontology at the University of Berlin, Ley developed a keen interest in rocket science. Inspired by Hermann Oberth’s book Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (“The Rocket into Interplanetary Space”), Ley published Die Fahrt ins Weltall (“Travel to Outer Space”) in 1926. Ley became one of the first members of a German amateur rocket group (VfR) in Berlin, and later served as a consultant for Fritz Lang’s 1929 pioneering science-fiction film Die Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon, which introduced the rocket launch countdown). Increasingly uncomfortable with the rise of the Nazi government, Ley fled Germany for the United States via Great Britain in 1935. In the US Ley became a noted author of science-fiction, as well as scientific articles predicting the future (the tunnel under the English Channel being one such prediction). Along with fellow German Wernher von Braun, Ley became a public spokesman for space travel in the US. He also wrote a book, The Conquest of the Moon (1953), with Wernher von Braun and Fred Whipple. He participated in “Man in Space,” a 1955 episode of Disneyland which explained spaceflight to a large television audience. Ley died on June 24, 1969, less than a month before NASA landed men on the moon.

Lippmann, Walter (1889-1974) | Walter Lippmann was a noted American journalist, author, and political commentator. At times a controversial figure, Lippmann also has been highly praised in terms ranging from “most influential” journalist of the 20th century, to “Father of Modern Journalism.” Lippmann’s 1922 book Public Opinion has been deemed “the founding book of modern journalism” and “the founding book in American media studies.” (He wrote more than 20 books during his long career.) Lippmann was born in New York City on September 23, 1889, the only child of well-off German-Jewish parents Jacob Lippmann and the former Daisy Baum. (Walter’s grandparents had come from Germany in the 1840s.) But for most of his life Walter went to great lengths to conceal or ignore his Jewish background in public. Even during the 1930s and 1940s, the syndicated columnist refrained from writing about the persecution of Europe’s Jews. His refusal to speak out for Jews, and his willingness to blame them for their own persecution, earned him a lot of criticism, especially after his death. In a column about a May 1933 address by Adolf Hitler, Lippmann praised the Nazi leader as “statesmanlike” and “an authentic voice of a genuinely civilized people.” He also seemed to be justifying the persecution of the Jews, arguing that the Jews were serving as “a kind of lightning rod which protects Europe” because oppression of German Jewry was “satisfying the lust of the Nazis who feel they must conquer somebody.” Lippmann has also been criticized for not keeping more distance between himself as a journalist and the political figures he reported about. Beginning with Woodrow Wilson in 1916, Lippmann would come to know every president who succeeded him, all the way up to Richard Nixon, who resigned shortly before Lippmann’s death. In his many books and articles, Lippmann wrote about this and other issues that continue to concern journalists to this day.

Lomb, Henry (1828-1908) | See Johan (John) Bausch (“Bausch & Lomb”).

Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray in a publicity still for the romantic comedy HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE (1935). PHOTO: Paramount Pictures

Lombard, Carole (1908-1942) | Carole Lombard was an American film actress who was married to Clark Gable at the time of her death in a plane crash in Nevada on January 16, 1942. Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana on October 6, 1908. Her parents were Frederick Christian Peters and Elizabeth Knight. Her paternal grandfather, Claus Peters (1875-1935), was the son of German immigrants. Her paternal great grandfather, John Claus Peters, was probably born in Munich. His wife (Carole’s paternal great grandmother), Caroline Catherine Eberlin, was probably born in Hanover, Germany. Lombard’s parents were wealthy members of the Fort Wayne community. (In 1885 in Fort Wayne, John Claus Peters, Carole’s paternal grandfather, built a mansion, a Richardsonian Romanesque style house, that featured a large Syrian-arched entrance. Peters was also the owner of the prestigious Wayne Hotel.) But Carole’s parents’ marriage was strained, and in 1914 her mother took the children and moved to Los Angeles. (The couple never divorced, but the separation was permanent. Carole’s father continued to support his wife and children financially.) Carole attended high school in Los Angeles and was something of a tomboy who participated in many sports. It was this athletic interest, baseball in this case, that got Lombard her first film role at the age of 12. In 1921, she signed a contract with Fox. The studio wanted her to change her surname. She had already been using “Carol” instead of Jane, and now she became “Carol Lombard” (from a family friend; the added e on “Carole” came later). She would end up working at several Hollywood studios, from Sennett to Paramount, during her film career. She was married to actor William Powell from 1931 to 1933. She married Clark Gable in 1939. Lombard’s final film, To Be or Not to Be, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and co-starring Jack Benny, a satire about Nazism and World War II, was in post-production at the time of her death. The actress was returning from a war bond rally in her home state of Indiana when her TWA DC-3 aircraft crashed in the mountains near Las Vegas, Nevada, shortly after refueling for the final leg of the flight to Los Angeles. All 22 aboard, including Lombard, her mother, and 15 U.S. Army soldiers, were killed instantly. Despite remarrying twice following her death, Gable chose to be interred beside Lombard at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California after he died in 1960. Carole Lombard is considered one of the definitive actresses of the screwball comedy genre, and ranks among the American Film Institute’s greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

Lowe, Rob (1964- ) | Robert (“Rob”) Hepler Lowe is an American actor, producer, and director. (His younger brother, Chad Lowe, also an actor, was born in 1968.) Rob Lowe was born March 17, 1964 in Charlottesville, Virginia, where his father, Charles “Chuck” Lowe, was attending law school at the University of Virginia. Chuck later became a trial lawyer in Ohio. Rob Lowe’s mother was Barbara Lynn Hepler (1939-2003). His parents divorced in 1970 in Dayton, Ohio. Rob and Chad’s mother married a second time (to William V Dyer) that year. That marriage ended in 1976, and Barbara moved with her two sons to Malibu, California. In California, Lowe attended Santa Monica High School, where he met Charlie Sheen (who happens to be Lowe’s 16th cousin once removed) and other high school students who would later become famous.

Lowe is of German, English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh ancestry. In an episode of the TV show “Who Do You Think You Are?” Lowe learned that one of his ancestors on his mother’s side, Johann Christoph Oeste (later Christopher East), was a Hessian soldier. Lowe’s 5th maternal great grandfather fought under the command of Colonel Johann Gottlieb Rall and was captured in the American victory at Trenton, New Jersey, on the morning of December 26, 1776. (See the Leutze painting of Washington in that battle above.) East was given a choice offered to all captured Hessians (and accepted by only about 10%), and decided to stay in the New World, in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Johannes Christoph Oeste was born and baptized in the village of Fürstenhagen (or Fuerstenhagen, misspelled as “Feurstenhagen” on most English-language web sources) in August 1754. Fürstenhagen was then a village in the principality of Hesse-Cassel. Today, with only 345 inhabitants, it is a part of the town of Uslar. According to the town’s website, seven sons from Fürstenhagen (“sieben Söhne aus Fürstenhagen”) served as “auxiliaries” (Hilfstruppen) in the American Revolutionary War. (Mercenaries are individuals serving in a foreign army; auxiliaries are troops sent by a prince to aid another prince.) The Landgraftschaft (landgraviate, principality) of Hesse-Kassel (spelled Hesse-Cassel during its existence, 1567-1803) earned money by renting out the military services of its poorer young men to Britain. Hesse-Kassel took the practice to an extreme, maintaining 5.3% of its population under arms in 1730. A soldier’s family also enjoyed benefits such as reduced taxes. An estimated 30,000 Hessian soldiers fought for the British, about 25% of the British army in America. Not all of them were actually Hessian (from Hesse), since many also came from other German states and kingdoms in what is Germany today.

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