Chief Horst Ulrich Beier, commonly known as Ulli Beier (30 July 1922 – 3 April 2011), was a German editor, writer and scholar who had a pioneering role in developing literature, drama and poetry in Nigeria, as well as literature, drama and poetry in Papua New Guinea. Early life and education Ulli Beier was born to a Jewish family in Glowitz, Weimar Germany (modern Główczyce, Poland), in July 1922. His father was a medical doctor and an appreciator of art, who reared his son to embrace the arts. After the Nazi party's rise to power in the 1930s, his father was forced to close his medical practice. The Beiers, who were non-practising Jews, left for Palestine. In Palestine, while his family were briefly detained as enemy aliens by the British authorities, Beier earned a BA as an external student from the University of London. He later moved to London, England, to earn a graduate degree in Phonetics. He found veterans were being given precedence in academic jobs and searched widely for a position. Marriage and family He married the Austrian artist Susanne Wenger. In 1950, they both moved to Nigeria, where Beier had been hired at the University of Ibadan to teach Phonetics. They divorced in 1966. Beier married the artist Georgina Betts, an Englishwoman from London who was working in Nigeria. In 1966, when the civil war broke out between Biafra and the federal government, they left the country and moved to Papua New Guinea. Career While at the university, Beier transferred from the Phonetics department to the Extra-Mural Studies department. There he became interested in traditional Yoruba culture and arts. Though a teacher at Ibadan, he ventured beyond it, living in the cities of Ede, Ilobu and Osogbo, to learn more about the Yoruba communities. Due to his subsequent anthropological work among the members of the clans that are native to these places, he was awarded Yoruba honorary chieftaincies. In 1956, after visiting the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris organized by Présence Africaine at the Sorbonne, Beier returned to Ibadan with more ideas. In 1957, he founded the magazine Black Orpheus. Its name was inspired by "Orphée Noir", an essay by the French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre. The first African literary journal in English, Black Orpheus quickly became the leading venue for publishing contemporary Nigerian authors. It became known for its innovative works and literary