Richard Baier

Infobox person | name = Richard Baier | image = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-31316-003, Berlin, Prozeß gegen Agenten vor dem Obersten Gericht.jpg | caption =right| The five defendants are the men in the second row | imagesize = | birth_name = | birth_date = | birth_place = Kassel, Prussia, Germany | death_date = | death_place = | occupation = radio presenter and reporter | party = |spouse = Ute |parents = |children = |alma_mater = | nationality = German Richard Baier (born 27 November 1926) is a German former journalist and radio presenter. Richard Baier was born in Kassel where Ludwig Baier, his father, as "Kapellmeister", was in charge of music at the local theatre. Because of this connection Richard Baier found himself playing several child roles in local drama productions, but what he really wanted was to become a physician. The outbreak of war a couple of months before his thirteenth birthday made that impossible. However, as a teenager he received a Medical corps training in nearby Hofgeismar which involved four days of theoretical instruction and three days serving in an anti-aircraft unit. After the incorporation of Austria into a "Greater Germany", the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda had reconfigured the country's national radio broadcaster into the Großdeutscher Rundfunk "Greater German Radio" organisation with effect from 1 January 1939. By 1943, with so many young men conscripted into the armed forces, there was an acute awareness that the only male voices heard on the national radio service were those of men "too old to fight", and there was a move to recruit a radio announcer with a "young voice". By October 1943 Baier's father was based in Berlin, providing musical accompaniment for musicians entertaining the troops, and it was through his contacts there that he became aware of the broadcaster's search for a young voice. This was how Richard Baier, a few days before his seventeenth birthday, found himself one of twenty candidates invited to Berlin for an interview-audition.