Frederick Henry Cramer was born on March 2, 1906 in Berlin, Germany. His father was Hans Cramer, a wealthy import/export grain merchant in Germany. He attended the Arndt Gymnasium in Berlin, then attended law school at age 17 from 1923-1924. He did graduate work at Erlangen University, Columbia University, the University of Berlin, and the Universitat Zurich from which he received his Ph.D. Before joining the Mount Holyoke faculty as an associate professor of history in 1938, he served as a visiting lecturer at Zurich and during the 1938-1939 academic year was a visiting lecturer at Harvard University. Along with his professorship at Mount Holyoke College, Cramer also taught at Hartford Junior College and Holyoke Community College, was a visiting lecturer at Smith College during the summer of 1938, and taught at the Harvard and Boston University summer schools as well as at the Universitat Zurich. Cramer and his wife Elizabeth Ziegler Cramer were married for twenty-seven years and were the parents of five children. The Cramers were avid automobile racers and were the only American entrants in the Rallye Automobile Monte-Carlo, Europe's biggest auto competition, in January 1954. Frederick Cramer died September 4, 1954 at the age of forty-eight while taking part in the Rallye Automobile Monte-Carlo.