Otto Kundert, 88; Musician, CIA Analyst and Teacher

Otto Robert Kundert, 88, a musician and retired analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency, died Dec. 10 of coronary artery disease at his home in Winchester.

Mr. Kundert was born on a farm in Java, S.D., to ethnic German immigrants from Russia. He entered the University of South Dakota at age 16 to become qualified to teach elementary school. A lifelong music lover who was the church organist at age 8, he played violin with the university symphony and clarinet in the marching band. He received an undergraduate degree years later, in 1954, and a law degree from American University in 1955.

As an elementary school teacher, he taught piano and conducted numerous children's choruses, and then moved to Chicago to pursue his own music dreams. An operatic tenor, he studied voice and was a featured soloist at churches, until his plans were interrupted by World War II.

A member of the Army Air Corps, he was an Army instructor in Denver, where he continued to study voice and perform. Transferred to New Haven, Conn., he performed with Yale glee clubs and appeared on war bond shows with such celebrities as Tony Martin and Glenn Miller. He also appeared on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour.

Mr. Kundert, who was fluent in German, was transferred to the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, Md., where he studied and taught courses on prisoner interrogation, aerial photo interpretation and German order of battle.

He was sent to Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1945 to work as chief of a War Crimes Branch translation section, which contributed 70 documents to the Nuremberg war crimes trials. After his discharge, he became chief of a political intelligence section at the 7707 European Command Intelligence Center at Oberursel, Germany, where he and his staff interrogated refugees and German prisoners of war. He also studied Russian.

Returning to South Dakota in 1950 to see his dying father, he spent a year making speeches about postwar Europe, America's role in the world and the Soviet threat. He moved to the Washington area in 1951 to work on the staff of newly elected U.S. Sen. Francis H. Case (R-S.D.), and joined the CIA in 1952 as a German and Russian translator and economic analyst. He retired in 1976.

He maintained his interest in music, singing with the cantata choir of the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill.

After moving to Winchester in 1973, he taught voice privately and taught German and Russian at Lord Fairfax Community College, was a church organist at several congregations and sold real estate. He wrote poetry in his spare time and was an invited speaker at Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship meetings across the country.

Mr. Kundert also gave psychic readings. A daughter recalled that his clients included the famed death and dying expert Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and a number of elected officials on Capitol Hill whose names she preferred to keep private.

"He was always a spiritual and intellectual seeker, a free thinker," she said.

His wife, Esther Uglem Kundert, died in 2004.

Survivors include two daughters, Sonia Kundert of Winchester and Lorna Kundert of Alexandria; three sisters; a brother; and a grandson.