Kurt Hohenemser Collection

Kurt Heinrich Hohenemser was born in Berlin, Germany, on January 3, 1906, to the musicologist Richard Heinrich Hohenemser (1870-1942) and Alice Matilda Florence Hohenemser née Salt (1879-1942). While his father came from a German Jewish family, Kurt’s mother was an English Protestant, the daughter of a Baptist minister.

Kurt Hohenemser attended primary school in Berlin and received his secondary education at the Goethe-Schule in Berlin-Wilmersdorf (1915-1918), Hermann-Lietz-Schule in Haubinda (1919), and Ziehenschule in Eschersheim (1920-1924). Hohenemser attended university at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt (today Technische Universität Darmstadt) from 1924 through 1929, receiving his Diplom-Ingenieur in 1927 and his Doktor-Ingenieur in 1929. His studies were in the fields of applied mathematics and mechanical engineering. In 1930, he followed his thesis advisor William Prager to the Universität Göttingen; while in Göttingen, Hohenemser and Prager coauthored the book Dynamik der Stabwerke (1933). During his time at the university from 1930 to 1933, Kurt Hohenemser was Privatdozent and assistant to Ludwig Prandtl, director of the university’s Institute of Applied Mechanics. On February 11, 1933, Kurt married Katharina Hohenemser née Dietrich (1910-1962). Their son Christoph was born in Berlin, Germany, on May 29, 1937. Their daughter Veronika was born in Berlin, Germany, on January 18, 1940.

At Göttingen, Hohenemser and William Prager organized a weekly political discussion group. They invited a colleague to the meeting who was known to sympathize with Nazi ideology. After the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, this colleague reported anti-Nazi statements made by Hohenemser and Prager; both men were dismissed from the university. After his dismissal, Hohenemser worked for the aircraft manufacturer Fieseler Flugzeugbau in Kassel for a year before going to work as a consultant for Anton Flettner, whose company specialized in the manufacture of helicopters. He remained with Flettner through the end of World War II. Though Kurt Hohenemser’s father was Jewish, Kurt and his wife and children were protected during the war due to his work for Flettner. In 1942, Richard and Alice Hohenemser committed suicide in their Berlin apartment, rather than face the possibility of deportation. In 1943, because of increased Allied bombing of Berlin, Hohenemser and his family moved with the Flettner company to Schweidnitz in Silesia. They remained there until the company’s factory was destroyed by Allied bombs in late 1944. In January 1945, as the Soviet Army neared the city, Hohenemser and his family fled Schweidnitz for the convent of Bildhausen near Münnerstadt, where his wife’s mother had found refuge from the bombing of Frankfurt am Main. The family remained in Bildhausen after the war while Hohenemser tried to regain his position in Göttingen. After over a year of unsuccessful attempts, the family made the decision to immigrate to the United States.

Kurt Hohenemser and his family sailed for New York from Bremerhaven, Germany, aboard the SS Marine Marlin, arriving in the United States on July 17, 1947. The family stayed with his colleague Hans Reissner in Brooklyn, New York, before moving to St. Louis, Missouri, in October 1947 for Hohenemser’s position at McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis. He worked as chief aerodynamics engineer of McDonnell’s helicopter division for 18 years before joining the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis in 1966 as professor of aerospace engineering. While at the university, Hohenemser’s research focus shifted from helicopters to wind turbines. He retired from Washington University in 1975 but remained as professor emeritus for two more decades. Hohenemser received many accolades during his career, including the Grover E. Bell Award (1957) and the Alexander Klemin Award (1964) from the American Helicopter Society.

Kurt Hohenemser's first wife Kate Hohenemser died on August 22, 1962, of breast cancer, with which she was originally diagnosed in 1956. In 1963, Kurt met Rose-Marie Gertrud Ingeburg Sader née Geisel, whom he married on December 17, 1966. Rose-Marie died of breast cancer on March 5, 1998. Kurt Heinrich Hohenemser died in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 7, 2001.