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Calmeyer was decidedly Pro-Life, and here was a man of his convictions, regardless of the pressures.
He was strictly anti-abortion, as in his vehement insistance that his out-of-wedlock son Michael, a second child that he wanted, not be aborted, despite his wife’s express demands that this accident be eradicated. He was not a perfectly faithful man, unhappy in a marriage that was itself arranged after his first son Peter was conceived unintentionally before the nuptials. He was a charming and attractive and sometimes all too willing ladies’ man, and his wife Ruth not always faithful either. But in issues of life and death and injustice, Hans Calmeyer was solid and unshakable.
His fervent desire to avoid wars were not exactly pacifist, but influenced by a long list of German anti-war intellectuals and by the tragic loss in WWI of both of his brothers in different clashes in the same week.
His views on the importance of assisting those whose life was endangered by State action are well-documented on this website and in the biographies written and still to be written about this great saver of Jewish lives, whom in most cases he never met... he had a great many Jewish friends after the war, but no overt reason to favor Jews, other than his professional job advising the Nazis in the Hague. He was non-assuming in a very serious way: during his life, the topic of his war-time deeds never really came up, though his closest family members had some inkling that some history was there.
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