 He was born in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France to a wealthy family of Alsacian origins.He studied architecture, but his cousin Jacques Hardy, an architect working in Egypt, advised him to come to Egypt due to the poor prospects for young architects in post World-War France.Lauer thus arrived in Egypt in 1926 where Pierre Lacau, then head of Supreme Council of Antiquities, gave him an 8-month position assisting Cecil Mallaby Firth's work on Djoser's Step Pyramid.