After 34 years at Portland State University, Herr Professor Doktor Thomas Kindermann, a German national and newly naturalized US citizen, died unexpectedly on June 19, 2023, one day short of his retirement. Thomas was born in 1954, in what was then East Berlin, eldest of three sons to Anton and Inge (née Teubner) Kindermann, both physicians who had lived through World War II (she as a student and he as a medic) and the reconstruction of Germany in its aftermath. In 1960, when Thomas was 6, the family fled East Germany for West Germany, months before the Berlin wall was erected. The children were distributed to relatives until the family could build a new life, which they established in Emmerich, a small town on the Rhine River, across from the Dutch border. Thomas attended the University of Trier, where he made lifelong friends, and finished his Diplom (Master’s degree). He then moved to West Berlin in 1980 to work for Margaret Baltes and complete his dissertation, after spending 6 months at the University of North Carolina, working with Jaan Valsiner and Robert Cairns. In Berlin, he met Ellen Skinner, an American working at the Max Planck Institute with Paul Baltes, which turned into a 41-year-friendship and collaboration that eventually included marriage and a daughter, Leona. In 1988, Thomas and Ellen moved to the University of Rochester and married in 1989, after Thomas was hired in the Psychology Department at Portland State University, where Ellen was also hired in 1992, the same year their daughter was born.
Devoted to teaching, research, students, and developmental science, Thomas taught classes on child development, adulthood and aging, social development, lifespan development, observational methods, and children’s peer relationships. His own research, which included studies of the development of the elderly in institutions and infants in family homes, eventually zeroed in on a lifelong passion for understanding children’s peer relationships—what peers do to, for, or against children’s development-- as a social context that children actually select and create for themselves. Working with colleagues, Thomas developed methods, called sociocognitive mapping, for capturing children’s peer networks and distinguishing selection from socialization effects. Conducting multiple grant-funded longitudinal studies, often in collaboration with his wife, he focused on the effects of peer relationships on children’s motivation, engagement, and learning in school. He published dozens of papers and several books and textbooks. He adored advising, mentoring, and working with both undergraduate and doctoral students across the department and university. He believed in his “Doktorkinder” and their many successes brought him great joy. He was committed to contributing to the larger community and served continuously on departmental and university committees, including most recently, Sigma Xi. He read and thought broadly, a true scholar, interested in the natural and social sciences, and especially in developmental perspectives. He had a special fascination for the conundrum of time.
Thomas kept strong ties to Germany, helping to raise a daughter who is bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural. Based on his German upbringing, he was a voracious and skeptical consumer of news about current events, with a deep understanding of world history and politics, as well as an independent and vocal opinion about everything. He felt that citizens had a moral obligation to speak out against government actions that were wrong, and he did so, even when he was met with resistance and criticism. He never met a stranger, and talked to and questioned everyone he encountered, from taxi drivers to college presidents, enjoying especially his daughter’s many wonderful friends, and tried to live according to his larger principles. He traveled to Germany several times a year, for weeks at a time, to visit his friends and brothers, and eventually to take care of his aging parents; his mother died in May 2022 at the age of 95. While returning from her funeral, he contracted COVID and, when he subsequently developed difficulty speaking and breathing, was diagnosed with long COVID. He nevertheless taught his classes the following fall and winter and participated in a developmental search, but could not speak well enough to finish out his last class in spring. After he collapsed at the beginning of June, he was diagnosed in the ICU with a rare form of ALS, that starts in the vocal cords, lungs, and throat. After 11 days in the hospital, he died of cardiac arrest at age 69.
With his German accent, big head of curly hair, giant moustache, and clogs, Thomas was an outspoken, charming, and unforgettable figure. His wisdom, insight, caring, enthusiasm, and honesty will be sorely missed. Thomas saw us all as citizens of the world; any donations in his name can be made to UNICEF children’s fund. The family with the support of the Psychology Department will hold a celebration of life in September, the same time that Thomas intended to throw a blow-out retirement party for all his friends, colleagues, and former students. He was eternally grateful to PSU, and especially to the Psychology Department, past and present, whom he regarded as his “work family,” for their efforts to make the world a better place and for including him in their mission.
The celebration is life is on Saturday, Sept. 23 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Native American Student & Community Center on the PSU campus.
Obituary written by Ellen Skinner and their daughter