Congratulations, Herr Kuhlmann!

Edmund Kuhlmann, founder of the E.W. Kuhlmann Foundation and loyal supporter of the University of Hildesheim, recently turned 94. His secret recipe for old age is to pursue work that fills you with joy and to see it as an elixir of life, because joy is life-enhancing. "He who rests, rusts. He who rusts, soon dies." Mr. Kuhlmann has never rested, as his eventful life testifies.

Born in Wilhelmshaven in 1930, he spent his school years in Hamburg. He did not complete his regular education as the war and the bombing of his school intervened. While working as a civil servant, he attended evening secondary school to complete his Abitur. This was followed by a degree in economics. From 1959, Kuhlmann worked for thirty years as an executive at the cigarette company British American Tobacco in Hamburg. There he helped to set up a pension scheme for employees. He co-founded the Informations- und Kontaktstelle aktiver Ruhestand e.V. (I.K.A.R.U.S.). In addition to his voluntary work, Kuhlmann completed a degree in social education in 1970 and became a lecturer at the University of Hamburg. In 1987, he completed his master's degree in philosophy.

"I always wanted to study philosophy, but you had to have a profession, so I studied economics at a young age." From 1990 to 1995, he was a social worker assistant in a municipal kindergarten. In all those eventful years, Kuhlmann made a fortune on the stock market on the side, which raised the question of what to do with it. In 1997, he and his wife Edith set up the E.W. Kuhlmann Foundation. This was prompted by the hospice movement, which is committed to improving e.g. terminal care. "When it was able to stand run on itself, we stopped funding it and continued with microloans."