Hans A. Land

Hans A. Land: A Life Defined by Fortune and Resilience 

Hans A. Land was born in Berlin, Germany in 1922 to Gustav (born 1880 in Danzig, now Gdańsk) and Martha Land (née Bud, born 1884 in Koeslin, Pomerania). His early life was dramatically shaped by the rise of Nazism and his family's Jewish heritage.

In 1937, Hans' parents sent him to England to complete his secondary education at the Quaker-run Ackworth School in Yorkshire, where he learned English and graduated in 1939. This decision would prove fortuitous given the events that followed.

Hans' father Gustav was a highly respected astronomer who had served as an officer in the German army during World War I and received decorations for his service. Despite the growing dangers for Jews in Nazi Germany, Gustav initially believed his status as a decorated WWI veteran would protect him from persecution. Martha, however, was more pragmatic and convinced her husband to explore opportunities in England.

This decision saved Gustav's life. While he was in London in November 1938, Kristallnacht occurred in Germany, and the Gestapo came to arrest him at their Berlin apartment. Martha immediately contacted Gustav and warned him not to return to Germany. Through a remarkable coincidence, Gustav attended a London party where he met the Astronomer Royal, who recognized him and offered him temporary work at the Royal Naval Observatory in Greenwich while searching for a permanent position for him.

By late 1938, Jews could still leave Germany if they had foreign visas and paid substantial "exit taxes." Martha managed to join Gustav in London in January 1939, placing their household possessions in storage in Hamburg. Through the Astronomer Royal's efforts, Gustav secured a position at Swarthmore College's Sproul Observatory in Pennsylvania.

Another stroke of fortune affected their immigration to America. While the German immigration quota had years-long waiting lists, Gustav's birthplace of Danzig had been separated from Germany after WWI and placed under League of Nations mandate with its own undersubscribed visa quota. This allowed Gustav to immigrate to the U.S. in June 1939 and apply for visas for Martha and Hans "to reunite the family." Mother and son were able to leave London just one week after WWII began.

Hans enrolled at Swarthmore College in September 1939, initially studying mathematics and chemistry at his father's direction, though he didn't enjoy these subjects. When his father accepted a research position at Yale University Observatory, the family relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, and Hans transferred to Yale to study international relations.

In January 1942, while taking an exam at Yale, Hans was summoned to the Dean's Office where two FBI agents interviewed him briefly. As a technical "enemy alien" with a German passport, Hans was under scrutiny, but the agents quickly determined his loyalty to the U.S. Just ten days later, Hans received his induction notice from the U.S. Army.

Hans initially trained as a medic at Camp Pickett in Virginia (without weapons, possibly still under observation) before transferring to military intelligence training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland. Shortly after completing this training, Hans was taken to Washington, D.C., sworn in as a U.S. citizen, flown to England, and attached to British Military Intelligence. After the D-Day invasion, he was assigned to the 5th Infantry Division, which formed bridgeheads across rivers from Luxembourg into Germany after the Battle of the Bulge, crossed the Rhine, and captured Frankfurt.

Hans shared two notable wartime stories: In one, he cleverly used local school textbooks to gather intelligence about terrain for his division's advance when aerial reconnaissance was insufficient. In another incident after the war ended, Hans discovered an ADAC office (German equivalent of AAA) that contained application files with detailed personal information on SS officers and Nazi officials—valuable intelligence that he turned over to U.S. counterintelligence.

Hans survived the war unscathed and returned to Yale in September 1945. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, he could afford to attend Harvard Law School, from which he graduated in 1949. He then worked in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department for four years before leaving to establish his own practice in Washington in 1956.

His career transition was aided by a connection made during his State Department service. While representing the State and Defense Departments in negotiations with German officials, Hans impressed a German industrialist who later provided him with a challenging legal assignment that Hans solved successfully. The resulting unexpected and substantial bonus allowed Hans to afford "an apartment, a car, even a wife."

In 1952, while still at the State Department, Hans took advantage of accumulated leave to earn extra money by guiding German business executives touring the U.S. under the Marshall Plan. This required simultaneous German-English interpretation, and Hans was paired with an experienced interpreter, Erika Feldmann, a Heidelberg University graduate working for the German government on the Marshall Plan.

Despite an 11-year age difference, different religious backgrounds, and the fact that Erika's father had been a Rear Admiral in the German Navy, Hans and Erika married in 1958. They enjoyed 51 years of happy marriage, traveling the world together until Erika's death in 2009. Hans "adored his wife" and believed that the acquaintance who connected him to this opportunity came into his life solely to introduce him to Erika.

Throughout his professional career, Hans specialized in counseling and representing foreign companies doing or wanting to do business in the United States. He maintained a small company with an operational office in Houston, Texas, that supplied specialty motors to industrial companies in oil, gas, and minerals production. Hans has lived in Washington, D.C. since 1950, purchasing an apartment with Erika in the early 1970s.

Hans recalled childhood memories of visiting his grandmother Emma, where children were kept separate from adults, and of cousins including Rosemarie Joseph (née Deutschland) and Nicol Weinberger (now Wintory). In the U.S., Hans and his parents maintained close relationships with Gustav's sister Gertrud (and her husband Georg Land and their son, Gunther), as well as with the grown children of Gustav's late brother Julius' widow Maria (called Mika): Walter, Adolf, and Gerda, all of whom had changed their surname to "Land" upon immigrating to the U.S. and lived in or near New York City.

Tragically, the Land family's household possessions—furniture, paintings, silver, Persian carpets, china, and crystal—which had been stored in Hamburg were lost during the war. When they learned in June 1939 that they would be settling in the United States, they arranged for their belongings to be shipped to New York. The vessel carrying their possessions had made it through the English Channel when war broke out, forcing it to return to Hamburg where the goods were returned to the warehouse. The warehouse was later destroyed in a British bombing raid.

Hans aptly summarized his remarkable life journey with a quote from Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing": "There was a star danced and under that was I born."

The above text was summarized using AI from an interview that was provided to us by sisters Lorrie Fereday and Vivian Baylor who interviewed Hans A. Land in Washington DC, on December 2, 2012. The photographs and information on this page are owned by Lorrie Fereday and Vivian Baylor. Do not copy or distribute without permission.