He then received lessons and encouragement from Leopold Auer (teacher of Mischa Elman, Efrem Zimbalist, Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein and others) in Dresden, and made a concert debut in 1912 as solo violinist.

Kulenkampff's health was fragile from early life, and towards the end of the First World War he returned to his home town to become concertmaster of the Bremen Philharmonic.

In 1927, he performed the Bach Double Violin Concerto in D minor with Alma Moodie (a student of Carl Flesch) and the Berlin Philharmonic (BPO)[1] In 1935 he formed a celebrated trio with the pianist Edwin Fischer and the cellist Enrico Mainardi, with whom he remained active until 1948.

In 1937 he gave the premiere of the rediscovered Violin Concerto in D minor of Robert Schumann, which had been studied and suppressed by Joseph Joachim, but which Kulenkampff now revived with the help of Georg Schünemann, the Nazi-appointed director of the Berlin State Library, where the autograph score was housed, and Paul Hindemith, whose compositions were already banned by the Nazi authorities.

In 1940 he moved to Potsdam, and in 1944, with increasingly unacceptable and intolerant demands from the prevailing powers[clarification needed], he left Germany for Switzerland.