Karl Ernest Meyer, a Madison native and longtime journalist for The Washington Post and The New York Times who wrote about Fidel Castro’s rise to power in Cuba and later was the author of books about international relations, archaeology and the worldwide illicit trade in artistic treasures, died Sunday, Dec. 22, at a New York City hospital. He was 91.
Meyer was born on May 22, 1928, in Madison, Wis., to Ernest L. Meyer, a columnist for The Capital Times and The Progressive, and Dorothy (Narefsky) Meyer, a teacher. He also was the grandson of Georg Meyer, editor of Die Germania, a Milwaukee-based, German-language newspaper in the early 1900s, reported The New York Times.
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In 1935, Ernest accepted a columnist position at The New York Post, moving the family to Manhattan, where Karl would attend high school.
Karl eventually returned to Wisconsin to attend the UW-Madison, where he served as editor of The Daily Cardinal. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1951, and went on to earn a master’s degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and a doctorate in politics from Princeton.
In 1952, Karl was hired as a reporter by The New York Times, the newspaper reported. He worked there for four years before moving on to serve as an editorial writer for The Post. He returned to the Times in 1979 as a senior writer on foreign affairs, a position he held until his retirement in 1998.
