Michael Meyer ’61, M.A. ’64, Ph.D. ’70

Michael Meyer ’61, M.A. ’64, Ph.D. ’70, died peacefully on Monday, Jan. 24, following a prolonged struggle with dementia. The historian, violinist and soccer player his family affectionately called “the happiest man on earth” was 81.

Meyer was born in Magdeburg, Germany, on April 7, 1940, during the period when his family — his photojournalist father, Karl; Jewish mother, Ilse; and brother, Peter — were hiding from the Nazis with relatives in the village of Domersleben. After the war, Karl, as an educated man and Nazi resister, became the mayor of the town. On New Year’s Eve 1948, the family, then also including Michael’s younger brothers, Christian and Thomas (Tommi), escaped Soviet-controlled East Germany, sneaking over the border to West Germany in the night. When Karl’s immigration visa to the U.S. was denied — likely because he’d been a mayor in Soviet-controlled East Germany — he sent Peter and Michael to live with family friends and attend school in Los Angeles. Michael was eleven. After completing high school, Meyer studied for two years at Santa Monica City College before transferring to UCLA, where he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in history and met Miriam Herschorn, whom he married in 1964. They had two daughters, Andrea and Katya.

Meyer was a professor at California State University, Northridge, for 35 years. He authored “The Politics of Music in the Third Reich” (Peter Lang, 1991), for which he received CSUN’s Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, along with numerous articles and book chapters on such varied topics as refugees from Hitler’s Germany, Richard Wagner, and Nazi art. He was a consultant and contributed an essay to the catalogue for the celebrated L.A. County Art Museum exhibit, “‘Degenerate Art’: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany.” At CSUN, he was known for his courses on Western civilization, modern European cultural and intellectual history, Nazi Germany and anti-Semitism. He also regularly taught UCLA Extension courses.

Meyer served as director of the California State University Junior Year Abroad program at Heidelberg University in 1990-1991 and, in 1996, organized an exhibit of his father’s photographs at the Magdeburger Museen in Germany, as well as writing the exhibit catalogue. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Magdeburg, his hometown, and a recipient of the Medal of Merit from the Federal Republic of Germany in 1999 for his contributions to German-American scholarly and cultural relations. With his close, longtime friend actor Eric Braeden (aka Hans Gudegast), he founded the German-American Cultural Society to encourage German-Jewish dialogue.

In addition to his record as a scholar, Meyer was an accomplished musician. Coming from a musical family, he trained as a violinist and played his entire life. When dementia prevented him from continuing to play with his long-time chamber group, he joined Music Mends Minds, an L.A.-based musical support group for people with neurocognitive disorders. He was featured in the documentary, The Fifth Dementia, about the group and the enduring power of music in the face of mental decline.

UCLA Soccer — Michael Meyer, front left.

Meyer’s other great passion was soccer. He played for the UCLA Men’s Soccer team from 1960 to 1963 and served as an assistant coach under head coach Dennis Storer. In 1963, he was recruited by Braeden to play for a semiprofessional team founded by Holocaust survivors, the Maccabees, with whom he played from 1963 to 1973. Of watching the UCLA team while recruiting players, Braeden said, “Mike was fast. No one was as fast as Mike.” The Maccabees, a team known for its diversity, won the U.S. Open Cup in 1973, one of the happiest and proudest moments in Meyer’s life. Later, he played with the mostly-German L.A. Soccer Club—which he and his teammates affectionately called “the old-timers’ league”—three times a week. He rarely missed playing the sport that kept him physically fit and preternaturally balanced emotionally. He continued to play into his 70s, until his illness made it impossible.

UCLA Soccer — assistant coach Michael Meyer, front, fifth from left.

Meyer is survived by his wife, Miriam, his daughters, Andrea and Katya, his brother, Tommi, his sister-in-law, Dorothy, his grandson, Aidan Bosmajian, his son-in-law, Harlan Bosmajian, his brother and sister-in-law, Jack and Rose Herschorn, as well as six nephews, two nieces, their children, several cousins, and too many dear friends to name. He was predeceased by his parents and his brothers, Peter and Christian.

Meyer was known for his warm smile, positive outlook, and extraordinary energy and erudition. Three years ago, he had a stroke from which he never fully recovered. Saddest for his family was watching his natural joy drain from him. His signature smile returned occasionally when his children visited, but more often he was expressionless and quiet. His family prefers to remember earlier days, when his memory first began to fail, when he still smiled often and grew more sentimental and expressive of his feelings than he had been previously. He was a loving son, brother, husband, father, grandfather and friend. He was an athlete, musician and scholar, a veritable Renaissance man. He integrated his passions into his daily life, and never wanted anything he didn’t have. When dementia forced him off the soccer field, he would still walk around his Pacific Palisades neighborhood and sit in his office with his dog Gus perched on his legs, gazing out at the natural beauty of Southern California, content. He truly believed he had the perfect life.

A memorial service for Michael Meyer will be held at the Villa Aurora in the Pacific Palisades on April 24. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Music Mends Minds.