H. R. Baukhage, radio commentator, writer, newspaperman and lecturer, was born January 7, 1889 in LaSalle, Illinois. He received his Ph.B. in literature from the University of Chicago in 1911. He then went to Europe and studied at the Universities of Bonn, 1911; Kiel, 1912; Jena, 1912; Frieburg, 1913; and at the Sorbonne, 1913.
Baukhage began his newspaper career on the Chautauqua Daily in 1908, then worked with the Paris bureau of the London Pall Mall Gazette in 1913. In 1914 he worked for the Washington bureau of the Associated Press. By 1916 Baukhage had become the assistant managing editor of Leslies, but in 1918 he enlisted as a private in the Coast Artillery Corps of the U. S. Army, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in Field Artillery and served with the American Expeditionary Forces. He covered the Paris Peace Conference for the Stars and Stripes after the armistice.
From 1919 to 1932 he was with the Consolidated Press, then moved to the United States News. In 1937, Mr. Baukhage joined the North American Newspaper Alliance and remained with them until 1940 when he became the Washington correspondent for the Western Newspaper Union, where he remained until 1945.
Baukhage was news commentator on the Farm and Home Hour for NBC from 1932 through 1942. He broadcast the outbreak of World War II from Berlin for NBC in 1939, and was the first person to give a news broadcast from the White House—the broadcast that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. He was a Washington commentator with the Blue Network, ABC, from 1942 to 1951, and for the next three years was a news commentator with the Mutual Broadcasting System. He served as the associate editor of the Army, Navy, Air Force Register in 1955, and in 1963 was writing for U. S. News and World Report.
Mr. Baukhage was the recipient of the National Headliners Club Award for 1945 for the best domestic broadcast of the year, and received the Public Service award from the University of Chicago Alumni Association in 1946. He belongs to the Overseas Writers organization, Radio Correspondents (president, 1941-1942), the Radio News Analysts Association, the National Press Club and the Cosmos Club of Washington, D. C. With C. L. Baldridge, he is the author of I Was There, 1919. He married Marjorie Collins on Nov. 8, 1922. Baukhage now lives in Washington, D. C.
