Jnl. Mechanisms Vol. 6, pp.

347-349/Pergamon Press 1971/Printed in Great Britain

Robert Adolf Kraus, 1898-1970

A Biography

ON 20 JUNE 1970 Professor emeritus Dr.-Ing. habil. Robert A. Kraus died in Steinau,
West Germany, of a heart attack. So ended a long life unusually full of travel and
adventure. The wife to whom he had been married for thirty years had died three years
earlier, in March 1967, after a long illness.
Born on 17 June 1898 in Karlsruhe-Durlach, he broke off his education, before
his last year in Gymnasium in order to serve as a volunteer in the military in World
War I; at the end of the war he was in Bucharest and there he won his Abitur; he then
studied Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University Karisruhe, earning his
Diploma in three years. From 1921 until 1928, he worked as a design engineer in
industry, with a manufacturer of mechanical handling equipment, but at the urging
of his mother, he also obtained an Assistantship at the T. H. Karlsruhe in this period
and was awarded his doctorate in 1926.
In 1928 he was called to become Professor of Mechanical Handling, Mechanics
and Mechanisms at the Chinese State University in Woosung near Shanghai, and
remained there eleven years. It was while he was there that he married in 1937 the
former Frieda Pruefer from Hamburg; in 1938 while home on a visit, he made his
Habilitation in Dresden. But war had already broken out in the Far East: the Chinese-
Japanese War, which had started in 1932 around Shanghai, began in earnest in 1937.
Professor Kraus remained at his post until April 1939, then was recalled to Berlin,
but returned to the University which had relocated in Kuming in April 1940. He got
home a year later only after the loss of all his possessions.
From 1941 until 1945, Robert Kraus was Professor of Machine Design and
Mechanisms at the Technical University in Brno, Czechoslovakia. In 1945 he returned
to Germany to Schleswig Holstein as a refugee, having for the second time lost his
home and all his possessions.
He worked for a while with the British Ministry of Supply in Germany, reporting
on research in Mechanisms; he became a docent in the T. H. Aachen, and published
his second book. But there he met Dr. J. C. Ghosh, who became the first Director of
the Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.) at Kharagpur, which was then being planned.
So it was that on 20 May 1950 Professor and Mrs. Kraus left Hamburg by ship and
went to India to become the first professor of the newly established I.I.T. Kharagpur.
His headquarters for the first six months were in the Bengal Engineering College.
Dr. Ghosh and Dr. Kraus between them collaborated in selecting most of the technical
staff, and setting up the Institute in Hijli. Dr. Kraus was Professor and Head of the
Department of Mechanical Engineering, and remained for seven years, but on several
occasions, he also substituted as Registrar and as Director of the Institute. The years
in Kharagpur were most productive: Dr. Kraus was a very hard-working and thorough
man, though rather a "lone wolf" in his investigations; eight of the eleven books which
he authored were written while he was in Kharagpur. In his lifetime he also wrote
about sixty articles, mostly on mechanisms or gears; forty of these had been published
prior to 1950. Recollections of many former students attest to his great popularity and

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esteem among them. " H e was an excellent and very human teacher, a very kindly but
forthright person. I think that of all the foreign professors I have come across, as
colleagues in Bengal and Kharagpur I liked Kraus best". "Witty and cheerful, he was
called 'Papa Kraus' by the students and was liked by all". "By nature he was a very
gentle person, although he had an imposing De-Gaullian personality. His characteristic
and personality made Dr. H. Luebke, President of the Federal Republic of Germany,
while he visited India in December 1962 to lay a foundation stone of I.I.T. Madras, to
casually r e m a r k - ' Y o u have General De Gaulle also on your stafft . . . . . A German
diehard tempered by frequent sojourn in the East, he was a pleasant compromise
between idealism and realism; apart from the prodigious excellence that he attained
in his own profession, he possessed an infallible knowledge of human nature; he
obviously had passed through all the rituals of life and as such knew the value of
diplomatic adjustment to suit any occasion". "I remember that in the early years at
I.I.T. Kharagpur, he used to ride a motorbike and once collided with a cow and hurt
himself. He had a fine sense of humour and had a great capacity for toleration and
containment". "It was first in August 1951, that, as a student, I met the 2-metre tall,
well built, benevolent and fatherly German professor, who introduced himself simply
as "Kraus". He was a very simple man, both in his mind as well as in his manners; we
were in the habit of seeing him in Kharagpur in a cotton bush shirt, cotton khaki
trousers and an Indian 'topee'. Years later, in Cologne, Mrs. Kraus once told us, that
the professor was not very happy over the new expensive tailored suits that she had
had made for him: he wanted to get back to his 'Kharagpur clothes'. In a bid to 'polish
up' her husband, she purchased some posh felt hats, but found that he dug up from his
old boxes an old battered felt hat which he used to wear in India in the Winter".
It was getting more and more difficult for Mrs. Kraus to stand the climate of
Kharagpur; she was not well and she would spend the summer in Darjeeling. She was
a very kind and motherly woman, very fond of the Professor's students and former
students and their wives. She was also an authoress, and wrote a book about Indian
life for German children.
Throughout the whole period that he was in India, Dr. Kraus had been providing
for his mother in Germany every month. In 1957, however, she became ill, and so the
Krauses returned to Germany to look after her. Robert Kraus became Professor of
Mechanisms at the Technical University of Braunschweig. Simultaneously he was
appointed Commissioner of the West German Government for planning and the erection
of a new I.I.T. in Madras. He and Mrs. Kraus settled in Cologne; he had an office in
Bonn and taught in Braunschweig and he travelled between them each week. This
continued until 1962. Their home in Cologne became a Mecca for their former Indian
students. "We could go there any time and enjoy their hospitality and company. It
was a sort of "must" on the occasion of Prof. Kraus' birthday to invite all his students
who lived within 100 miles of Cologne. Those are some of the best days of my life. We,
the old students, had little opportunity otherwise to meet each other: we looked forward
to this one day. Prof. Kraus was always jovial in the presence of his old students, and
used to crack jokes with them, and not always harmless ones. Mrs Kraus would s a y -
"Robert, don't spoil those innocent boys". He would r e t o r t - " W h a t ? Innocent?
They can spoil me!" But it was not always fun and laughter: we often had serious
discussions, mostly on the subject of the industrial and technical development of India.
Or he would advise us on the future plans of our career. I still remember one piece of
advice: +'While learning anything new, neither feel shy nor arrogant".
In 1962 Professor and Mrs. Kraus returned to India; as well as being a professor,
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he was Co-ordinator of the lndo-German Aid Program, continuing the work that had
started in Bonn, in establishing the I.I.T. Madras. He remained for five semesters,
until his retirement, and then returned to Germany as professor emeritus, and settled
in Steinau in 1964.
Since he had no children, his funeral was small. "It seems to me that the distinguish-
ing character of Professor Kraus lay in his modesty and his kindly and comradely
attitude to all mankind, which he felt to be important. One sign of this faithfulness was
that he maintained until his death a close friendship with the friends of his schooidays;
a wreath from them lay on his grave. His modesty appeared in the simple arrangements
for the funeral."
The quotations above come from former students and associates who have written:
S. R. Sen Gupta, S. S. Das Gupta, B. R. Seth, B. M. Belgaumkar, S. P. Sinha and A.
Kuhlenkamp. We are grateful for their most valued help.

F. R. E. C R O S S L E Y