Newly created scholarship honors Eugen Kullmann

A new scholarship at Kenyon recognizes the life and work of Eugen Kullmann, a long-time professor of religion at the College, who died last year at the age of eighty-seven. The fund was created by an anonymous donor with a gift of $200,000.

The donor--who calls Kullmann "an incomparable scholar and inspiring teacher of religion and philosophy, Hebrew and Aramaic, Latin, Greek, and German literature"--has asked that the scholarship be awarded, based on need, to a junior or senior studying in the College's Humanities Division. The donor has asked that preference be given to students who, "in their first years at Kenyon, have embraced the humanism shown by Professor Kullmann, in his being and actions, and his belief that learning is for and about life."

Kullmann, who was born and raised in Erlenbach bei Dahn, Germany, graduated from the gymnasium in Landau, Germany, and went on to earn a doctorate at the University of Basel in Switzerland. After immigrating to the United States, he studied at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York City, becoming a rabbi in 1966. Kullmann joined the College's faculty two years later and quickly became a highly regarded teacher. For many students and others in the community, he became Kenyon's unofficial Jewish chaplain. At Kullmann's retirement in 1984, the College awarded him an honorary doctorate in humane letters, citing him for "bringing rare learning and wisdom to us and your students."

"Blessed with a prodigious memory and a classical European education, Eugen brought to his classroom breadth, depth, and gentle humor," says Miriam Dean-Otting '74, now a professor of religious studies at Kenyon. "Students eagerly sought him out, and in one year he offered nine courses. That does not include the numerous informal seminars and tutorials that met at his home overlooking the Kokosing River. There Eugen's students were nourished with Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, and Spinoza, the Bible, the wisdom of the rabbis, the Upanishads and the Qur'an, Hoelderlin, Goethe, and Kafka. They never left the Riverhouse, as it was called by his students, without being filled, as well, with Apfelkuchen and the occasional glass of schnapps or good German wine."

For almost two decades after leaving the faculty, Kullmann continued to work with students at his home on Met-o-Wood Lane, across the Kokosing River from Gambier. The last of his students graduated in 2000. Kullmann died June 24, 2002, at a nursing home in Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he had lived for six months, after a brief illness.

Further donations to the fund will be gratefully accepted. Gifts should be made to the Eugen Kullmann Scholarship Fund in care of the Office of Development, College Relations Center, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio 43022-9623.