Niemeyer's father was a conservative political philosopher and friend of William F. Buckley, Jr. Upon Hitler's rise, in 1933, Niemeyer's father left Germany for Spain and then the US. Niemeyer, like his father, studied at the University of Munich. The "New York Times" obituary of June 29, 1997, states that Niemeyer's father: "wrote that fascism, communism and other such modern mass movements were the legacy of disoriented philosophers. He said their ideas corroded the cultural mettle of a society and spawned ideologies with a limited view of humanity."