George Bailey (1919 in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

– 2001 in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

) was an American journalist and writer who spent almost 60 years in Europe, most of them in Germany. He is best known for his book ''Germans, The Biography of an Obsession'', in which he interweaves the political, the historical and his own personal experience of 45 years of living and working in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. His other fields of expertise were the

Communist Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

, in particular the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

, and East–West relationships.

Biography

A graduate from Columbia College, where he studied Greek and Latin, and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied

English Literature English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...

under

C.S. Lewis CS, C-S, C.S., Cs, cs, or cs. may refer to: Job titles * Chief Secretary (Hong Kong) * Chief superintendent, a rank in the British and several other police forces * Company secretary, a senior position in a private sector company or public se ...

, he spoke several languages fluently, including German, Russian, French, Italian and Hungarian. He was married to Beate Ross, whose mother Hilde Ullstein was the granddaughter of

Leopold Ullstein Leopold Ullstein (6 September 1826 – 4 December 1899) was the founder and publisher of several successful German language, German newspapers, including ''B.Z. (newspaper), B.Z. am Mittag'' and ''Berliner Morgenpost.'' Many of these are still ...

, the founder of the

Ullstein Verlag The ''Ullstein Verlag'' was founded by Leopold Ullstein in 1877 at Berlin and is one of the largest publishing companies of Germany. It published newspapers like '' B.Z.'' and ''Berliner Morgenpost'' and books through its subsidiaries ''Ullstein B ...

. They had one daughter.

Public career

He was a U.S. Army liaison officer to the Soviet Army for seven years during and after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and was present as an interpreter at the surrender negotiations in Reims and Berlin. A correspondent for

American Broadcasting Company The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television network. It is the flagship property of the ABC Entertainment Group division of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, Cali ...

and

The Reporter (magazine) ''The Reporter'' was an American biweekly news magazine published in New York City from 1949 through 1968. History and profile The magazine was founded by Max Ascoli, who was born in 1898 in Ferrara, Italy to a Jewish family. in Ascoli grew u ...

, he also wrote for numerous other newspapers and periodicals, was editor for

Kontinent ''Kontinent'' was an émigré dissident journal which focused on the politics of the Soviet Union and its satellites. Founded in 1974 by writer Vladimir Maximov,Tatyana ShvetsovaAfter word to the epoch of Nikita Khrushchev PAUL GRAY. THE SEVEN D ...

, Springer, Berlin, and was director of

Radio Liberty Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

from 1982 to 1985. In 1959 he received the

Overseas Press Club The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain ...

award for the best magazine reporting of foreign affairs,. The George Bailey Collection is at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University The Inventory of the George Bailey Collection
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Bibliography

* ''The Experts'', Seymour Freidin and George Bailey, 1968, The Macmillan Company, New York. * ''C.S. Lewis: Speaker and Teacher'', Collective work. Carolyn Keefe (author) Thomas Howard (forward), 1971, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids * ''Germans, The Biography of an Obsession'', 1972, 1991, The Free Press, A Division of Macmillan, Inc New York * ''Munich'', 1980, Time Life Books, Amsterdam * ''Armageddon'' in prime time'', 1984, Avon Books, The Hearst Corporation, New York * ''The making of Andrei Sakharov'', 1988, Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, London * ''Galileo's Children: Science, Sakharov, and the Power of the State'', 1990, Arcade Publishing, New York * ''Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War'', David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev and George Bailey, 1999, Yale University Press * ''Verbindungsmann, Ein Leben zwischen Ost und West'', 2002, Ullstein Verlag, Germany, (''False Dawn: Liaison Officer to the Red Army'', translated into and published in German only)

References

External links

Yale University Press

Publishers Weekly

Former Radio Liberty director dies
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bailey, George American male journalists 20th-century American writers 1919 births 2001 deaths American expatriates in Germany