Hans J. Baer was born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1927. Soon after his father’s death in December 1940, he moved with his mother and siblings to New York City. At thirteen, he was enrolled in the Horace Mann School in the New York suburb of Riverdale, later going on to study at Lehigh University where he graduated in 1947 with a B.S. in industrial engineering. During this same year Hans traveled back to Zurich where he began his training in the foreign exchange department of Bank Julius Baer. This was an inevitable move on his part because as the eldest son of the Richard Baer branch of the family he was expected to take over the bank management at some point in the future. The following year he went back to the States to work as a trainee at Brown Brothers Harriman and later at the family’s former Baer Custodian Corporation. He attended evening classes at New York University and in 1950 he received his M.A. in economics from NYU.

Despite an initial uncertainty about establishing a firm foothold in the family banking business and making it his career, Baer continued on and became one of Switzerland’s best-known and highly respected banking personalities. He was made a partner of the “Baerbank” in 1960 and became chairman of the board in 1997. His involvement in financial circles has gone far beyond his own bank. He has served as President of the Swiss Stock Exchange’s Listing Office, Chairman of the Association of Swiss Merchant and Trust Banks and an executive-committee member of the Swiss Bankers’ Association, to name just a few outside affiliations.

Aside from the business aspects of his life, Hans Baer has had a long love affair with the arts, particularly music and painting. He served from 1982 until 1992 as President of Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra and also has ties to Carnegie Hall, a result of his long-standing friendship with Isaac Stern.

Baer also retained other connections to the States, where he spent many memorable years in his youth. He is a Visiting Fellow for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard. In 1997, at Lehigh, Baer established the Hans J. Baer International Scholarship Fund for an international undergraduate. And in 1997, he received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, an honor close to his heart. In 2000, Baer established at Lehigh the Hans J. Baer ’47 Endowed Chair in International Finance.

Hans J. Baer resides in Switzerland. He was married to the late Ilse Baer and has two children and four grandchildren.