Humanities Giving Spotlight:

Kratz Bequest to Support GTAs in Germanic

The College of Humanities recently received a generous bequest from the estate of Henry Kratz Jr. Dr. Kratz, who earned his masters and doctoral degrees in German from Ohio State in 1946 and 1949, passed away on April 14 at the age of 86. His thoughtful and generous gift to his alma mater will improve the lives of graduate students by supporting their scholarly endeavors.

The proceeds of the bequest have established the Dr. Henry Kratz Jr. Fund in Germanic Languages and Literatures which will be used for annual stipends of graduate teaching assistants in the department. Recipients will be chosen by the chair of the department in consultation with the faculty members and will be given in honor of Kratz's former professors, Hans Sperber and Wolfgang Fleischhauer.

Kratz was an emeritus professor of German from the University of Tennessee and a scholar widely respected for his extensive knowledge of languages both ancient and modern. His primary area was Germanic philology and lexicography. He taught courses in Gothic and Old and Middle High German for the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages, and for many years he also taught the course on Old Saxon for the Department of English at UT. Besides the Germanic languages, Dr. Kratz also read Welsh, Gaelic, Greek, and various Romance languages, including Italian, French, Spanish, and Latin.

His early teaching posts were as an instructor at the University of Michigan and from 1953 to 1955 an instructor at the University of Massachusetts. In 1955 he left academia to join the G & C Merriam Co. of Springfield, Massachusetts, where he worked on Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language: Unabridged. He was responsible for over half the etymologies in that standard reference work and supervised work on the other half. In 1960 he returned to teaching, having accepted a position at the University of Oregon, and in 1965 he was recruited by a former teacher at Ohio State, Dr. Reinhold Nordsieck, to come to the University of Tennessee to build the newly established graduate program in German. He succeeded Nordsieck as head of the department in 1972 and served in that capacity for fifteen years.

The college is fortunate not only to receive gifts of this magnitude from loyal alums, but also to be able to use the funds to support the education of talented and deserving students. We greatly appreciate Dr. Kratz’s generosity and foresight.