KAAD Honorary President Professor emeritus Dr Peter Hünermann celebrates his 95th birthday

In 1985, Peter Hünermann took over the newly created office of President of the KAAD. In the first years of his presidency of the KAAD, he restructured our scholarship organisation by transferring the model of partner committees, which he had tried out in his work as Chairman of the Scholarship Organisation Latin America-Germany (Intercambio Cultural Alemán Latinoamerica, ICALA), to KAAD. Through these partner structures, KAAD's funding work was tied back to the local churches, thus anchoring the interests and needs of the partner countries in KAAD's selection and funding policy. Similarly, the KAAD office was organised into five continental departments in order to intensify cooperation with local partners. The ‘Jahresakademie’, the annual highlight of our educational work, was also established by Peter Hünermann. For many years, he provided strategic impetus for the work of German Catholics in the global church on important church and development policy issues in his keynote addresses in the framework of the ‘Jahresakademie’. Peter Hünermann retired from the office of President in 2002, but remained actively involved with KAAD as Honorary President. In 2008, he established the KAAD Foundation Peter Hünermann, which provides financial support for educational projects of former KAAD scholarship holders. Since 2011, it has awarded an annual prize to outstanding alumnae or alumni who have returned to their home country in cooperation with our alumni associations and partner committees.

Peter Hünermann studied Roman Catholic theology in Rome, was ordained a priest there in 1955 and received his doctorate in 1958. In 1967, he habilitated in Freiburg and in 1968, together with the philosopher of religion Prof Dr Bernhard Welte, he founded the Latin America-Germany Scholarship Foundation to intensify academic cooperation between Latin American and German universities in philosophical and theological research, but also in education and the social sciences. From 1971 to 1982, Peter Hünermann taught as Professor of Dogmatics at the University of Münster, and from 1982 until his retirement in 1997 in Tübingen.

Peter Hünermann received honorary doctorates from the Universidad Católica Boliviana in Cochabamba, the Pontificia Universidad Catolica di Argentina in Buenos Aires, the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg and the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Erfurt.