Frederick Yeiser’s life reads a little like a movie.  He came from a well-to-do Cincinnati family and attended Princeton University.  He was a music, art, and book critic for the Cincinnati Enquirer, and he traveled extensively through Europe and the Middle East.  During World War II, he served as a member of the Office of Strategic Services, the United States’ first intelligence agency and he just happened to marry a German heiress.  The staff at the Archives and Rare Books Library (ARB) recently completed re-processing a small collection of Frederick Yeiser’s personal and professional papers.  Although ARB has held this collection since the 1990s, the collection had not been fully processed and the photographs and correspondence were not properly housed or organized.  ARB was lucky enough to have the assistance of our intern Brittney Smith to better organize and describe the collection.

Frederick Yeiser’s father Henry C. Yeiser, Sr. was President of the Globe-Wernicke Company, but there is very little on Frederick Yeiser’s early life in this collection.  Instead, the collection largely begins with information on Yeiser’s attendance at Princeton University in the late 1910’s.  Yeiser’s studies were interrupted by World War I and he served for six months in the U.S. Navy.    After his service, he returned to Princeton and received his bachelor’s degree in 1921.   He then worked for three years for his father’s company, the Globe-Wernicke Company, before accepting a teaching position with American University in Beirut, Syria.