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George Clare (writer)

UK-Austrian journalist (1920–2009)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ5537924 ↗
Source-derived summary

George Peter Clare (né Georg Klaar) (21 December 1920 – 26 March 2009) was a British author and Holocaust survivor who wrote autobiographies Last Waltz in Vienna and Berlin Days. Last Waltz won the 1982 WH Smith Literary Award.

He was born in Vienna in 1920; his father, Ernst Klaar, was an assimilated Jewish banker. He fought during World War II for the British Army and worked as a news editor for many years, including for Axel Springer AG. He was naturalised as a British citizen in 1947. He died on 26 March 2009, aged 88.

His mother was Stella Ernestyne. The Klaars were an upper-class family, and George said that they led easy lives until the war. He came from a family of doctors; his grandfather was an army surgeon and the first Jew to reach a high military rank, and his grandfather was a distinguished doctor also.

In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by NUI Galway.

George was married to Lisl Beck, his childhood sweetheart, from 1939 until the marriage was dissolved in 1964.

Editorial summary

“George Clare (writer)” enters the record as uK-Austrian journalist (1920–2009). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what George, Clare and writer can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1920, 2009, 1982, 1947—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1920-12-21. Its strongest next move is a source search built around George, Clare and writer.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“George Clare (writer)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, George, Clare and writer provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5537924. VIAF identifies the subject as 54942397. The Library of Congress control number is n81109919. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920, 2009, 1982 and 1947.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “George Clare (writer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.