Born to an American father and a German mother. He was arrested in 1935 under paragraph 175. Released after 15 months but re-arrested in 1937 and imprisoned at Fuhlsbüttel prison, then transferred to Waldheim prison in Saxony, where he suffered a nervous breakdown and transferred to the prison hospital where he remained until the end of the war. After the war he was hired at a bank but his employer fired him after learning of his 175 convictions.