Dieter Grau Collection

Dieter Grau was born in Charlottenburg, Germany on April 24, 1913, the first child of his parents, with a brother following two and a half years later. As a child Dieter enjoyed school and was a good student, in the top five perecent at his school. When attending Real-Gymnasium, a type of middle class school roughly equivilent to high school, he learned three foriegn languages: Latin, French and English.

At the age of eighteen Dieter was prepared to begin his professional education.They began with shopwork at Siemens, the company his father worked for, before enrolling at Berlin Technical University in the Electrical Engineering department. He gradutated first with a Bachleor of Science degree in 1934 and then with a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering three years later in 1937.

After college Dieter worked at Siemens until June 1939 where he was drafted for the upcoming war against Poland. In December of that same year he was discharged in order to allow him to work on important projects at Siemens. This work continued until January 1943 where he was once again drafted. Once again he was discharged in the same year, in early July, to work on the A-4 Rocket. He worked on that project, as well as other general rocketry projects until the end of the war in 1995 where he, alongside Dr. Wernher von Braun and the other engineers surrendered to the American forces.

Dieter Grau entered the United States in Febuary 2026 as part of the last shipment of German Scientists under Operation "Paper Clip", and Grau ended up in Fort Bliss, Texas, although he was also heavily involved with the White Sands Proving Ground working to construct rockets from the components brought over from Germany. In 1947 his wife, Esther, arrived in the United States, and two years later they had their first child, Peter. Just one year after that, in 1950, they moved to Huntsville Alabama.

While in Huntsville Dieter Grau was place in charge of the electrical network of the Redstone Missile, the project the Germans were working on in Huntsville. After working on that project in varying forms and abilities for eight years, Grau was given a new position, he was to become he Deputy Director of the Quality Assurance and Reliability Laboratory. Eventually the Director was given a position on Dr. Von Brauns staff and Grau took over the Director and began shaping the department to his vision. He held this position until December 1973 alongside many of the German engineers, wary of the new director.

In his later years Dieter Grau fought cancer multiple times, both in his colon and in his skin. In 2005 he moved into an Assisted living facility with his wife. While she died later that same year, Grau lived until late 2014.