Sitting on the ornately decorated living room wall of Dagmar Grieder’s South Austin home is a little blond doll clad in a floral dress. It was the one her mother abruptly picked for her to take as they fled their home in Hindenburg, Germany (now Zabrze, Poland) during Hitler’s Third Reich. While Dagmar’s witnessed Austin’s ever-changing skyline flourish since arriving in 1967, most of her life – and interests – remain fixed abroad.
Born to a businessman and housewife in Germany in 1937, Dagmar’s early life centered around escaping Hitler’s regime and the Russian front in World War II.
“There were bombing raids day and night every day, and we had to go down to the basement where there was a bomb shelter,” she explained. “In the middle of the night they had to take us out of our bed to go to the shelter, and [when] my father got drafted and sent to the front, my mother had never had to rely [on herself] and be in charge of everything without support.”
Together with her mother, younger brother Michael, and Aunt Erna (who was not blood-related, but a godmother to Dagmar and Michael), Dagmar departed from her home, moving from small town to small town throughout her childhood, living mostly with strangers who were able to house them. She recounts that her small family unit often went hungry and foraged for berries and mushrooms in the woods to supplement the little food they received with their ration cards.
Post-war, Dagmar’s mother and Aunt Erna forged a plan to be sent to an American-occupied section of Germany to escape the Russian front, but it meant they first had to live in a camp that was formerly for prisoners of war. A few months into living at the camp, they were transported to Bavaria in Southern Germany on a freight train, and ended up on a dairy farm in Enisried, where they would live for the next five years before moving to Speyer with Aunt Erna.
Eventually going through school and making her way to the University of Mainz, Dagmar studied English and Turkish, which would take her to Istanbul to work an assistant job. In Turkey, Dagmar met Paul Wilson, an American airman, who became her first husband.
“We started dating, got married, and had two babies… [when he got] orders to return to the United States, he came with a wife and two kids.” Recalling this, she laughed, “I was a ‘Mrs. Wilson.’”
“In the middle of the night they had to take us out of our bed to go to the shelter.” – Dagmar Grieder
In 1961 when Dagmar arrived in the U.S., she lived in the deeply segregated city of Charleston, S.C. In the harrowing autobiography she published last year titled The Mushroom Girl, Dagmar detailed, “I spoke out for equal rights and made myself unpopular. The few times when I had a chance to explore, I used the bus and made a point of sitting as far back as I could.”
Arriving in Austin in 1967 after living in Myrtle Beach for a few years, Dagmar picked up a part-time job at Austin National Bank – making just $1.50 an hour – and after three years together, she and Paul divorced.
Reflecting on her move to Austin, Dagmar described, “It was very small; it had 135,000 people living here. Ben White was pretty much the end of the city … and the Capitol was the tallest building Downtown.”
Taking on a full-time bookkeeping position at the Bergstrom Air Force Base branch, Dagmar worked her way up through promotions, eventually transferring to the Congress Avenue headquarters. And in her early 60s, she retired from the bank as vice president – a proud journey she described as a “Cinderella story.”
In the midst of focusing on her career, she became acquainted with Dr. Terence Grieder, a UT art history professor, at a Unitarian church event for single parents. They wed in the early 1970s and with each bringing in two children of their own, they became a family of six.
Specializing in pre-Columbian art, Terry often traveled for field work during the summers, which meant that Dagmar would join him, to take her yearly vacations. The pair also traveled the world together outside of work, an interest they both shared until his passing in 2018.
Now 87 years old, Dagmar spends time moving and building houses, a hobby she’s come to love. Since Terry’s passing, she’s gotten back into the dating game, meeting her current boyfriend Donald on Match.com.
On getting into dating in her 80s, she says, “Dating in your 80s and 90s is different from dating in your 20s, but it’s still very nice to have a personal relationship with somebody. … We see each other every day, but we don’t live in the same place. Both of us still work a lot, and it’s important for us that we have time and attention to our work.”
She credits Donald for helping her edit The Mushroom Girl, and detailed that they spend their time going on walks together and traveling whenever they can.
Although Austin’s been Dagmar’s home for almost 60 years, she continues to share stories about her lifelong love for traveling and other cultures, telling me about trips to Mexico, Iran, and Easter Island. She’s always brainstorming about what state or country to visit next and in her own words is always “looking for something to explore … I’m cultivating curiosity.”
This article appears in July 4 • 2025.