Between 1972 and 1991 Kühn served as Chair of the , an organisation sponsored by the West German government which promoted awareness of the shared cultural and linguistic roots of East and West Germany, and in retrospect can be seen to have kept alive the idea that German division, viewed almost universally as a permanent fixture through the 1970s and nearly all of the 1980s, might not be permanent after all. In practice the BfgA was a highly politicised institution: the choice of Kühn to lead it was endorsed by the duration of his incumbency. When the organisation was hit by a media storm in 1981 one caption writer described him in 1981 as "a lawyer with a heart" ("Jurist mit Herz").