Fried, Paul G. (1919-2006). Papers, 1851-2015.

Paul George Fried was born on April 4, 1919, in Leipzig, Germany, and was raised in Wiesbaden, Germany and Vienna, Austria. In April 1938, Fried was arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned in Vienna before leaving for England and worked for the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews in 1939. In December 1939, Fried entered the United States aboard the SS Veendam. He began studies at Hope College in 1940. Fried was drafted in 1943, and became a United States citizen on June 1, 1943. He served in Europe during World War II as an interpreter and sharpshooter for the army until 1945. After the war, Fried learned that his brother perished fleeing a concentration camp and his father, mother, and younger brother had died in 1942 in the Lodz ghetto in Poland. He graduated from Hope College in 1946 and completed a master’s degree in Modern European History at Harvard University in 1947. He served as the Chief of Translation by the Council of War Crimes for the Nuremburg Trials between the years 1947 and 1949. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Erlangen in Germany in 1949, and continued studies in history and international law at Harvard University. From 1951 to 1953, he worked for the US Air Force Research Division as a liaison officer to British Intelligence offices in Kiel, Essen, and Hamburg, Germany. In September 1953, Fried began his 30-year teaching career at Hope College. During his career, he served as chair of the History Department and director of the Office of International Education, where he started an overseas program to Germany and Austria starting in 1956, which became known as the Hope College Vienna Summer School. In 1968, the Republic of Austria awarded Fried the Gold Medal of Merit in recognition of his services in fostering international understanding. He continued as the director until 1976. In 1984, Hope College presented him with a Distinguished Alumni Award. In 1987, Fried was awarded a Hope College honorary degree. In 1990, the International Education Center at Hope College was named in his honor, and in 2005 an auditorium in the Martha Miller Center for Global Communication was named in honor of Dr. Fried and Dr. Hemenway. Fried was an avid art collector and subsequently donated many pieces of art to Hope’s permanent collection. The collection contains biographical information about Fried’s life in Europe, work on the Nuremburg trials, his 30-year career as a history professor and director of international education at Hope College, published articles, involvement with the Vienna Summer School program, and his own historical research. The collection includes 17 boxes of correspondence with former students, co-workers, acquaintances, foreign consuls and government officials. His most voluminous correspondence was with Isaac L. Auerbach, Harriett Cook, John Dryfhout, Arthur Frederix, Rolf Italiaander, John Mulder, and Bruce Van Voorst. Also noteworthy is his correspondence with Stephen Hemenway, Alma Scarlett, John Hollenbach, Art and Martha Kate Barnhart, and Margaret Sanger. Fried regularly retained copies of his outgoing correspondence, so his files often offer a unique opportunity to view both sides of these written conversations. If a visible Vienna Summer School connection is present in correspondence, the title includes the notation (VSS). An attempt has been made to recognize VSS alumni, but not all have been identified. Where files contain correspondence in German, or in both German and English, the titles contain a notation of (G) or (G/E). Vienna Summer brochures, photographs, and “Das Werden,” are contained in the Vienna Summer School collection, H88-0327. A separate box is dedicated to correspondence, articles, and clippings relating to Rolf Italiaander. John Hollenbach’s writings and notes on conversations he had with Paul Fried are found in the Biographical Materials in Box 1.