Career
He first moved to the United States to work at Rice University in 1930 and officially naturalized on 6 November 1935. In 1942 a petition was submitted to revoke his citizenship due to his national German sympathies, and the case was fought in courts until ultimately he was allowed to retain his American citizenship in 1944. In the next thirty-plus years Meyer wrote extensively about German literature and about American Culture, but also published on gardening under a pseudonym Robert O. Barlow.
He died in Bellingham, Washington, and his papers are held in the Jean and Alexander Heard Library Special Collections at Vanderbilt University.
He first enrolled at the University in Erlangen in 1923. In the same year he transferred to the university in Munich.
From 1924-1928, Meyer studied in Freiburg, where he received his doctorate in German Literature. After teaching in Martin Luserke"s Schule am Meer for two years, he then moved to Houston, Texas, where he lived for 13 years as a German instructor at Rice Institute (today"s Rice University (Werner 234-235).
In 1935 Meyer applied for and received United States Citizenship.
Meyer took two trips to Germany shortly after naturalizing, in 1936 and again in 1938. A request he made for an audience with Adolf Hitler in 1938 was denied. His German nationality brought him under suspicion of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who began to investigate his work.
In September 1942, a petition to revoke Meyer"s citizenship was filed in Houston, and Meyer had to serve as his own defense until attorneys Garvey West. Brown and William Hatten were hired for his case.