Plaque in memory of Hans Bunte, design: A. Walter, cast: A. Komo & Sohn/Frankfurt am Main, presumably 1932, 103.5 × 59.5 cm, bronze. KIT South Campus, Engler Bunte Institute, building 40.12.
On the 25th anniversary of the Gas Institute at Karlsruhe Polytechnic, students and employees of the chemist Hans Bunte (1848–1925) celebrated the institute’s founding in 1907 with a memorial plaque. Hans Bunte’s son Karl Bunte (1879–1944) was one of these initiators in both capacities. Shortly after the institute’s establishment as a teaching and research facility of the German Association of Gas and Water Experts (DVGW), Hans’s son assumed a leading position there. Karl Bunte had earned his habilitation degree at Karlsruhe Polytechnic in 1917 and was appointed Professor of Fuel Chemistry in 1920. Hans Bunte’s retirement in 1919 facilitated this familial succession, a practice that would go against regulations today as a conflict of interest. Karl Bunte endeavored to construct a spacious new building for the Gas Institute. Initially, this project progressed only as far as the laying of the foundation stone in 1939; a new building was eventually completed in 1961. kn