Kaffee und Kuchen is a German tradition when a community comes together for coffee and sweets in the evening. Its other name translates to coffee gossip.
On German Unity Day, Kaffee und Kuchen was held in memory of professor Thomas Nadar, who taught in Auburn University’s German department for almost 30 years and helped many students win Fulbright Scholarships to study abroad.
The Nadar family presented Natalie Hester, junior double majoring in media studies and German, with the first annual Thomas R. Nadar Memorial Endowed Scholarship.
“It’s a huge honor to me, and I’m just really grateful because Dr. Nadar was my first professor of German here at Auburn, and I was kind of going through a hard time,” Hester said. “As a freshman, it’s really scary, and you don’t know what you were getting into. He was so supportive and really helped me transition and feel my family here at Auburn.”
Paul Harris, associate director of the Honors College, gave a presentation on the culture and development of Germany post World War II, outlining the aftermath of the war, its subsequent division into East and West Germany and its eventual reunion.
“It was a big honor for me because I thought the world of Dr. Nadar,” Harris said. “And when I say I thought the world of him, I mean all of my friends when I was a student wanted to make sure that I told his family how much they meant to him. I wanted to make sure that I had an opportunity to tell his family how much their brother meant to me and them.”
Harris would like to encourage readers to pursue a foreign language as a double major or a minor because it opens up the world to them and makes them eligible for study-abroad scholarships like the Thomas R. Nadar Memorial Endowed Scholarship.
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