Age, Biography, and Wiki
Henry Alfred Kissinger was born on May 27, 1923, in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany. He would have been 102 years old as of May 2025 if he were alive today. Kissinger passed away on November 29, 2023, at the age of 100. His early life was marked by fleeing Nazi Germany with his family, eventually settling in the United States. He served in the U.S. Army and went on to become a prominent figure in American politics, serving as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford.
| Occupation | Political Scientist |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 27 May 1923 |
| Age | 102 Years |
| Birth Place | Fürth, Bavaria, Germany |
| Horoscope | Gemini |
| Country | Germany |
| Date of death | 29 November, 2023 |
| Died Place | Kent, Connecticut, U.S. |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is limited publicly available information regarding Kissinger's physical measurements such as height and weight. However, he was known for his distinctive appearance and commanding presence.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Kissinger was married twice, first to Ann Fleischer from 1949 to 1964, and then to Nancy Maginnes in 1974, with whom he remained married until his death. His personal life was often overshadowed by his professional career.
In a 2022 BBC interview, Kissinger vividly recalled being nine years old in 1933 and learning of Adolf Hitler's election as Chancellor of Germany, which proved to be a profound turning point for the Kissinger family. During Nazi rule, Kissinger and his friends were regularly harassed and beaten by Hitler Youth gangs. Kissinger sometimes defied the segregation imposed by Nazi racial laws by sneaking into soccer stadiums to watch matches, often receiving beatings from security guards. As a result of the Nazis' anti-Semitic laws, Kissinger was unable to gain admittance to the Gymnasium and his father was dismissed from his teaching job.
The relationship between Nixon and Kissinger was unusually close, and has been compared to the relationships of Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, or Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins. In all three cases, the State Department was relegated to a backseat role in developing foreign policy. Kissinger and Nixon shared a penchant for secrecy and conducted numerous "backchannel" negotiations, such as that through the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, that excluded State Department experts. Historian David Rothkopf looked at the personalities of Nixon and Kissinger, saying:
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| Husband | Ann Fleischer (m. February 6, 1949-1964) Nancy Maginnes (m. March 30, 1974) |
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Net Worth and Salary
At the time of his death, Henry Kissinger's net worth was estimated to be around $50 million. However, some estimates suggest his wealth could have been significantly higher, potentially exceeding $80 million when including his real estate holdings and shares in his consulting firm, Kissinger Associates. He earned substantial income from speaking fees, book royalties, and business consulting. In the late 1970s, he was earning around $600,000 annually from these sources, which is equivalent to approximately $2.5 million today.
Career, Business, and Investments
Kissinger's career spanned politics, academia, and private consulting. He was a key figure in shaping U.S. foreign policy, particularly during the Nixon and Ford administrations. His diplomatic efforts included establishing relations with China and negotiating a ceasefire in Vietnam, for which he shared a Nobel Peace Prize. Post-government, he founded Kissinger Associates, a consulting firm that advised corporations on international relations and business strategies. He also served on the boards of companies like American Express and CBS. His speaking engagements often commanded high fees, reportedly reaching into the six-figure range.
After leaving government, Kissinger founded Kissinger Associates, an international geopolitical consulting firm which he ran from 1982 until his death. He authored over a dozen books on diplomatic history and international relations. His advice was sought by American presidents of both major political parties.
From 1956 to 1958, Kissinger worked for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as director of its Special Studies Project. He served as the director of the Harvard Defense Studies Program between 1958 and 1971. In 1958, he also co-founded the Center for International Affairs with Robert R. Bowie where he served as its associate director. Outside of academia, he served as a consultant to several government agencies and think tanks, including the Operations Research Office, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Department of State, and the RAND Corporation.
Kissinger discussed being involved in Indochina prior to his appointment as National Security Adviser to Nixon. According to Kissinger, his friend Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the Ambassador to Saigon, employed Kissinger as a consultant, leading to Kissinger visiting Vietnam once in 1965 and twice in 1966, where Kissinger realized that the United States "knew neither how to win or how to conclude" the Vietnam War. Kissinger also stated that in 1967, he served as an intermediary for negotiations between the United States and North Vietnam, with Kissinger providing the American position, while two Frenchmen provided the North Vietnamese position.
Social Network
Henry Kissinger was not particularly known for his presence on social media platforms. His public life was largely focused on traditional media and diplomatic circles.
Kissinger remained at Harvard as a member of the faculty in the Department of Government where he served as the director of the Harvard International Seminar between 1951 and 1971. In 1955, he was a consultant to the National Security Council's Operations Coordinating Board. During 1955 and 1956, he was also study director in nuclear weapons and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. He released his book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy the following year. The book, which criticized the Eisenhower administration's massive retaliation nuclear doctrine, caused much controversy at the time by proposing the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a regular basis to win wars. That same year, he published A World Restored, a study of balance-of-power politics in post-Napoleonic Europe.
"They were a fascinating pair. In a way, they complemented each other perfectly. Kissinger was the charming and worldly Mr. Outside who provided the grace and intellectual-establishment respectability that Nixon lacked, disdained and aspired to. Kissinger was an international citizen. Nixon very much a classic American. Kissinger had a worldview and a facility for adjusting it to meet the times, Nixon had pragmatism and a strategic vision that provided the foundations for their policies. Kissinger would, of course, say that he was not political like Nixon—but in fact he was just as political as Nixon, just as calculating, just as relentlessly ambitious ... these self-made men were driven as much by their need for approval and their neuroses as by their strengths."
Kissinger initially had little interest in China when he began his work as National Security Adviser in 1969, and the driving force behind the rapprochement with China was Nixon. Like Nixon, Kissinger believed that relations with China would help the United States exit the Vietnam War and obtain long-term strategic benefits in confrontations with the Soviet Union.
Education
Kissinger pursued his higher education at Harvard University, where he earned his Bachelor's degree in 1950. He later received his Master's and Ph.D. in philosophy in 1951 and 1954, respectively. His academic background played a significant role in shaping his political science career.
In conclusion, Henry Kissinger's life was marked by significant diplomatic achievements and a successful post-political career that contributed to his substantial net worth. His legacy continues to influence international relations and political discourse.
Born in Germany, Kissinger emigrated to the United States in 1938 as a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II. After the war, he attended Harvard University, where he excelled academically. He later became a professor of government at the university and earned an international reputation as an expert on nuclear weapons and foreign policy. He acted as a consultant to government agencies, think tanks, and the presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller and Nixon before being appointed as national security advisor and later secretary of state by President Nixon.
He was the son of homemaker Paula, from Leutershausen, and Louis Kissinger, a school teacher. He had a younger brother, Walter, who was a businessman. Kissinger's family was German-Jewish. His great-great-grandfather Meyer Löb adopted "Kissinger" as his surname in 1817, taking it from the Bavarian spa town of Bad Kissingen. In his childhood, Kissinger enjoyed playing soccer. He played for the youth team of SpVgg Fürth, one of the nation's best clubs at the time.
Kissinger spent his high-school years in the German-Jewish community in Washington Heights, Manhattan. Although Kissinger assimilated quickly into American culture, he never lost his pronounced German accent, due to childhood shyness that made him hesitant to speak. After his first year at George Washington High School, he completed school at night while working in a shaving brush factory during the day.
Kissinger studied accounting at the City College of New York, excelling academically as a part-time student while continuing to work. His studies were interrupted in early 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army.
Kissinger underwent basic training at Camp Croft in Spartanburg, South Carolina. On June 19, 1943, while stationed in South Carolina, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. The army sent him to study engineering at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania under the Army Specialized Training Program, but the program was canceled and Kissinger was reassigned to the 84th Infantry Division. There, he made the acquaintance of Fritz Kraemer, a fellow immigrant from Germany who noted Kissinger's fluency in German and his intellect and arranged for him to be assigned to the division's military intelligence. According to Vernon A. Walters, Kissinger also received training at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, before being shipped to Europe. Kissinger saw combat with the division and volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge. On April 10, 1945, he participated in the liberation of the Hannover-Ahlem concentration camp, a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp. At the time, Kissinger wrote in his journal, "I had never seen people degraded to the level that people were in Ahlem. They barely looked human. They were skeletons." After the initial shock, however, Kissinger was relatively silent about his wartime service.
In 1946, Kissinger was reassigned to teach at the European Command Intelligence School at Camp King and, as a civilian employee following his separation from the army, continued to serve in this role.
Kissinger earned his Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in political science from Harvard College in 1950, where he lived in Adams House and studied under William Yandell Elliott. His senior undergraduate thesis, titled The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee and Kant, was over 400 pages long, and provoked Harvard's current cap on the length of undergraduate theses (35,000 words). He earned his Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy at Harvard University in 1951 and 1954, respectively. In 1952, while still a graduate student at Harvard, he served as a consultant to the director of the Psychological Strategy Board, and founded a magazine, Confluence. At that time, he sought to work as a spy for the FBI.
Kissinger's doctoral dissertation was titled Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium (A Study of the Statesmanship of Castlereagh and Metternich). Stephen Graubard, Kissinger's friend, asserted that Kissinger primarily pursued such endeavor to instruct himself on the history of power play between European states in the 19th century. In his doctoral dissertation, Kissinger first introduced the concept of "legitimacy", which he defined as: "Legitimacy as used here should not be confused with justice. It means no more than an international agreement about the nature of workable arrangements and about the permissible aims and methods of foreign policy". An international order accepted by all of the major powers is "legitimate" whereas an international order not accepted by one or more of the great powers is "revolutionary" and hence dangerous. Thus, when after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the leaders of Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia agreed to co-operate in the Concert of Europe to preserve the peace after Austria, Prussia, and Russia participated in a series of three Partitions of Poland, in Kissinger's viewpoint this international system was "legitimate" because it was accepted by the leaders of all five of the Great Powers of Europe. Notably, Kissinger's Primat der Außenpolitik (Primacy of foreign policy) approach to diplomacy took it for granted that as long as the decision-makers in the major states were willing to accept the international order, then it is "legitimate" with questions of public opinion and morality dismissed as irrelevant. His dissertation also won him the Senator Charles Sumner Prize, an award given to the best dissertation "from the legal, political, historical, economic, social, or ethnic approach, dealing with any means or measures tending toward the prevention of war and the establishment of universal peace" by a student under the Harvard Department of Government. It was published in 1957 as A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812–1822.
A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. In that period, he extended the policy of détente. This policy led to a significant relaxation in U.S.–Soviet tensions and played a crucial role in 1971 talks with the People's Republic of China premier Zhou Enlai. The talks concluded with a rapprochement between the United States and China, and the formation of a new strategic anti-Soviet Sino-American alignment. He was jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with Lê Đức Thọ for helping to establish a ceasefire and U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. The ceasefire, however, was not durable. Thọ declined to accept the award and Kissinger appeared deeply ambivalent about it—he donated his prize money to charity, did not attend the award ceremony, and later offered to return his prize medal. As National Security Advisor in 1974, Kissinger directed the much-debated National Security Study Memorandum 200.
