Gutekunst Prize of the Friends of Goethe New York

Frederic(k) Paul Gutekunst was born in Moberly, Missouri on July 24, 1889. His parents were George and Emilie Gutekunst, originally of Germany. Upon his graduation from Moberly High School, he attended from 1908 until 1912 Central Wesleyan College, which was a small, closely-knit German Methodist college founded in 1864 as a home for Civil War orphans and to supply a higher education institute for German Methodist youths in the area.

Upon his 1912 graduation with a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in German, he accepted a faculty appointment at Central Wesleyan College as a professor of German and Stenography. By 1915, Frederick was employed as an assistant in the University of Missouri’s German Department. Despite not having a graduate degree, Frederick was considered a faculty member at the University of Missouri, and was listed as such in the 1918 yearbook. In 1917 he married Grace Zimmerman, who also had graduated from Central Wesleyan College.

In 1924, Frederick graduated at the University of Missouri – Columbia Masters of Arts program with a Masters of Arts degree in German. Frederick continued to teach at the University of Missouri for a couple of years before relocating to New York City in 1926 to enroll in Columbia University’s graduate doctoral program and started teaching German at Hunter College. Frederick, his wife and their two daughters relocated to Mt. Vernon, New York. Despite not finishing his doctoral degree, Frederick was promoted to Assistant Professor at Hunter College in 1928. He was tenured as an Assistant Professor at Hunter College for 34 years until his retirement in 1960.

Frederick Paul Gutekunst died in Mt. Vernon, New York in January 1985.

(The research on Frederick Gutekunst was done by Johanna Blakely-Bourgeois.)