CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Look what the email brought in: Something out of the blue, but it warmed my heart. It might warm yours, too. And in this case, it solved a Jewish mystery that had gone unconfirmed for a long, long time.
Writing occasional columns for the San Diego Jewish World website over the past ten years or so often brings me delightful surprises that come in the mail, email in most cases.
Just the other day, I received an email from Jean Klugman in Boston that read: ”Hello Dan. My cousin Heather Siegel just sent me a copy of the article you wrote nine years ago, in 2011, in the San Diego Jewish World about a Jewish Boston man who served as Martin Luther King’s German-language tutor at Boston University when MLK was studying for his PhD exam in the 1950s.”
In my article for this online newspaper in 2011, I was not able to give the name of the man I was writing about, since I did not know his name and saw no way I would ever find out. But Jean solved the mystery.
”That was my grandfather, Herman Klugman, whose wife was Dora. Good detective work on your part,” Klugman’s grand-daughter in Boston told me in her email.How did she find me? She contacted me via the San Diego Jewish World email address that the editor of this website is kind enough to append to all my articles here.
A second email from Jean’s cousin, Heather Siegel in Escondido, California, read: ”Herman Klugman was Jean’s grandfather, as she told you in her email and he was my mother’s uncle. I have two younger brothers who are actively trying to do research on the family, too.”
So after nine years, mystery solved. And a big thank you to the two women for taking the time to write in.
Now just to recap the major points my article in 2011: I wrote at the time that “a German- Jewish emigre in Boston was Martin Luther King’s German-language PhD exam tutor at Boston University when King was studying for his doctorate in systematic theology in the early 1950s, according to a self-published memoir by a Methodist pastor named Milo Thornberry.”
Thornberry, who was a friend of mine from my Taiwan days, told me he had employed the same tutor when Thornberry was studying for his PhD in 1965 at Boston University.
While Thornberry told me he could not recall the man’s name, he is sure he was a German immigrant who lived in the Back Bay section of Boston and he was sure he was King’s tutor in the early 1950s. For two reasons: one, because his PhD advisers at Boston University, Per Hassing and Harold DeWolf, told him so, and two, because the tutor once mentioned it.
It turns out that Krugman was a retired professor at the time when he tutored the young Martin Luther King in his small Back Bay apartment in Boston.
”King was in his early 20s, while his tutor was in his 60s,” Thornberry said.
How did this come about? One of MLK’s professors recommended the German-speaking man to King as an excellent German-language exam tutor.
“[That tutor] knows how to get students ready for the exams,” Harold DeWolf told Thornberry in the mid-1960s, when he was studying for his doctorate in Boston, and DeWolf recommended the same tutor for Thornberry, adding that the same man had been MLK’s tutor as well.
Now thanks to the man’s two American relatives who wrote to this newspaper last week, we now know the name of the tutor: Herman Klugman, z’l.
He passed away in 1974, according to an obituary in the Boston Globe that year.
Klugman lived in a small apartment with his wife Dora in the Back Bay section of Boston, and that is where King went for his tutoring sessions with him. It was in September of 1951 that King began his doctoral studies in systematic theology at
Boston University.
Boston University.
His dissertation, “A Comparison of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Wieman,” was completed in 1955, and the PhD degree from Boston University, a Doctorate of Philosophy in Systematic Theology, was awarded on June 5, 1955.
The man we now know as Herman Klugman was, according to Thornberry, ”small in stature, thin, with a head of gray hair, and it was believed that he come to the U.S. from Nazi Germany. He spoke English with a German accent and usually tutored graduate students in German, although he also tutored PhD students in French.”
When Klugman was asked about his memories of MLK when he was his student for the off-campus tutoring sessions, Klugman told one of the Boston University advisers who was also Thornberry’s advisor: “Ah yes,he was a good student, that Martin!”
Klugman also told Thornberry: “When Martin was here as a student at BU, I knew I would be reading about him in the newspapers someday, he had that charisma about him already, but I just didn’t know it would be so soon. Within six months of getting his doctorate, he was leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott!”
I asked in my article published here in 2011: “If any readers out there in cyberspace know the name of this tutor in Boston, please contact me at the address below.”
Finally, nine years later, we have confirmation that his name was Herman Klugman.
Long live the internet, and thanks to Jean Klugman and Heather Siegel for taking the time to contact this website.
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Dan Bloom is a freelance writer, inveterate web surfer, and climate change activist based in Chiayi City, Taiwan. He may be contacted via dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com