Kuenstler, Walter E. (1887-1969 )

Walter Elmer Kuenstler was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 5, 1887, the son of Emma and Richard Kuenstler, a Pennsylvania "Dutch" (German) banjo maker. Walter and his wife Nell were living in Indiana when their first son, Richard, was born in 1912, but by 1916 when daughter Marjorie was born, Walter had moved to Chicago and was working as a commercial artist for an engraving company, a position he held through the early 1920s (his occupation was appropriate considering that his name, Künstler, means "artist" in German). Their second son, Walter P. Kuenstler, was born in Chicago in 1918, and died in Pennsylvania in 1982.

By 1926 Walter and his family had settled in Grantwood, New Jersey. He received several patents on small inventions in the late 1920s and 30s. In the 1940s he established a home business called Kuenstler Chrystal Finishing Laboratory in Bergen, New Jersey. He was a member of the Mineralogical Society of America and the New York Mineralogical Club, serving the latter as Vice President in 1942. Kuenstler must have had a substantial mineral collection, as some specimens are known to have come from Martin Ehrmann, a dealer in high-end pieces. Walter Kuenstler died in Bradenton, Florida in September 1969.