John William Kurtz Papers

Professor of German John William Kurtz was born in the small rural community of Earlville, Illinois on 17 November 1906.  He received his A.B. from the University of Iowa (1927). Before coming to Oberlin in 1932, Kurtz was a graduate assistant at the University of Illinois (M.A. 1929, Ph.D. 1932), and he spent a year as an exchange student at the University of Munich under the Institute of International Education. While at Oberlin College (1932-73), Kurtz served as head of the Department of German and Russian (1956-70). Kurtz and Dean Blair Stewart designed summer sessions abroad for Oberlin’s foreign language departments, with the first going to Vienna in 1959. He also helped to establish the annual German Exchange Program with the Federation of German-American Clubs. Kurtz served on the College Faculty Council; committees that helped establish the hospital insurance plan, increased salaries and retirement policy (age 66) for the faculty; and, the committee that designed the Oberlin’s Master of Arts in Teaching Program.

In 1976 he published a biography of John Frederick Oberlin entitled John Frederic Oberlin (Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado), the Alsatian pastor after whom Oberlin College was named.  The work also later appeared in a German edition.

He married Edith Davis and the couple had four sons, David, Eric, Robert, and Karl. John Kurtz died in Oberlin on 2 February 1984. He had a history of heart disease. 

Edith Davis Kurtz died on 21 September 2004 at Kendal  at Oberlin, Oberlin. She was 100 years old.

Sources Consulted

Faculty of John Kurtz (RG 28/3); and the memorial minute for John Kurtz by Joseph Reichard, the Oberlin Alumni Magazine, summer 1984, page 64.