Kurt Strauss obituary
My father, Kurt Strauss, who has died aged 95, was a senior engineer who worked for more than two decades at the Electricity Council, the government body that coordinated electricity supply in England and Wales before privatisation in 1990.He worked for all of that time within the council’s overseas relations branch, managing international relationships, technical exchanges and consultancy services while rising steadily through the ranks to associate director.German by birth but brought up in the UK, he was a passionate European who spoke French and German, and was therefore well suited to those responsibilities.Kurt was born in Degerloch, a suburb of Stuttgart, into a Jewish family.In 1937 his parents, Viktor, who worked in the family down and feather business, and Marianne (nee Melzer), sent Kurt’s older brother, Helmut, to safety in Britain, where he ended up at a boarding school, Sidcot, in Somerset.
Shortly afterwards Viktor was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp.The headteacher of Sidcot brought the family’s case to the Quakers’ Germany Emergency Committee, who were trying to help Jews escape from Germany, and as a consequence Viktor was released from Dachau, after which the whole family were evacuated to London in the spring of 1939.The Quakers subsequently found a place for Kurt at Sidcot, paying most of his fees, and it was there, as an 11-year-old, that he met his future wife, Ann Clark, who was in the same year.He left school at 18 and joined EMI, where he served an engineering apprenticeship that included part-time study for a degree in radio engineering.His work and studies were interrupted by two years of national service with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, after which, in 1961, he moved with Ann – whom he had married in 1956 – to Brussels with their young family.
There he took up a job as control engineer with Eurovision, a pan-European television network, and he was still new to the job when he found himself as engineer-in-charge on the night of John F Kennedy’s assassination, sharing dramatic film images of the events with TV news channels across Europe.The family returned in 1965 to London, where Kurt began his work for the Electricity Council as a senior engineer, retiring in 1989.Having joined the Religious Society of Friends with Ann in 1961, over the years Kurt served with quiet dedication and good humour on various Quaker committees working for peace, inter-faith understanding and international aid.He loved classical music and travel, and as a talented photographer documented his many trips in meticulous photo albums.A hands-on engineer within the home, he designed all manner of ingenious contraptions and devices, and was a self-taught early adopter of home computers.
In 2006, Kurt and Ann moved to York, where Ann died in 2013.He is survived by their three children, Diana, Alison and me, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.Another child, Jennifer, died aged two in 1967.
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