Hans Koch (historian)

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Hans Koch (born July 7, 1894 in Lemberg , Galicia , Austria-Hungary , † April 9, 1959 in Munich ) was a German theologian , Eastern European historian and officer in the intelligence service of the Wehrmacht High Command .

Life

First World War and studies

Koch was a descendant of Palatine immigrants and attended the German grammar school in Lemberg. He then began studying Protestant theology in Vienna (1912–1914). During this time he joined the Association of German Protestant Theologians Wartburg in the Waidhofen Association .

During the First World War he fought under the command of the Austro-Hungarian Colonel Eduard Fischer in Bukovina against Russian troops as an intelligence officer. In 1918 he was captain of the Ukrainian Galician Army of the West Ukrainian People's Republic . After the end of the war, he joined the Ukrainian nationalist Symon Petlyura . He also had contact with General Anton Denikin . With him he negotiated a contract dated November 1919. Koch was captured during the fighting with the Red Army , from which he was released in 1921.

He went back to Vienna and studied philosophy and theology there; he obtained his doctorate in 1924 phil. and in 1927 Dr. theol.

Research on Eastern Europe and work in the Wehrmacht High Command

In 1929 he became a private lecturer in ecclesiastical and Eastern European history, and in 1934 full professor for ecclesiastical history at the University of Königsberg .

Koch became a member of the NSDAP in Austria on January 1, 1932 and again on August 1, 1935 in the German Reich (membership number 3,703,926). In Breslau he also acted as a block leader . He became a member of the NS-Altherrenbund as well as the NS-Lecturers 'Association and the National Socialist Teachers' Association .

From 1937 to 1940 he was a full professor of Eastern European history at the University of Breslau and director of the Eastern European Institute affiliated with the university . In October 1938 he proposed to open an Orthodox theological academy in the German Reich in order to establish a connection with the Eastern Church with England . The Reich Church Ministry reacted positively to this proposal; as Werner Haugg , who has been a consultant in the Reich Church Ministry since 1935, announced in November 1938 that the institute was to be founded in Wroclaw (instead of Vienna) for pragmatic reasons. In 1940 Hans Koch became professor for Eastern European history at the University of Vienna . He was also visiting professor in the Bulgarian capital Sofia and head of the German Scientific Institute in Sofia.

At the beginning of the Second World War he was deployed to the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) in the Foreign Office / Defense in Abwehr Department II as a captain of the reserve. Koch acted as a consultant for Ukrainian affairs for the OKW . In Ukraine he had the task of establishing contact with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).

He took on further tasks as the head of the group AI der Auslands / Abwehr II in OKW, which handled the following missions:

  • Exploration and engagement of minorities and opposition organizations
  • Preparation of propaganda for the purpose of disintegration within the enemy troops
  • Exploration and establishment of communication and communication channels to political groups in the event of peace and war
  • Exchange messages with allies and friendly powers
  • Preparation of reports and memoranda on the goals and organizations of minorities and oppositional groups in foreign powers

From 1941 on he was a liaison officer of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories with Army Group South . He was also involved in the German art theft by the OKW in the Soviet Union in 1944 .

Denazification, career after 1945

After the liberation from National Socialism, Koch was released from the University of Vienna in July 1945 and went into hiding in a Vienna hospital. After that he used his theological knowledge and took the position of a Protestant pastor in Aich-Assach in Styria for several years . He was part of the so-called "professors group" of the Gehlen organization , which provided them with studies for a fee. Since 1949 he was a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv. In 1952 he became director of the Eastern European Institute in Munich , where he worked until 1959. From 1954 he also worked as a director at the Hochschule für Politik eV in Munich . At the University of Munich in 1958 he received a professorship for society and politics in Eastern Europe.

When Konrad Adenauer traveled to Moscow in 1955 to negotiate the establishment of relations with the Soviet Union, Koch accompanied him as a "scientific advisor" and interpreter. From 1954 to 1959, Koch was also the (federal) spokesman for the Weichsel-Warthe country team .

Koch's library is located in the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Research , which has given its estate to the Bavarian Main State Archives .

A Nazi book scandal

In 1955 there was a scandal that was also discussed in the German Bundestag . Koch had the book Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism. The Spiritual Attack of the East , published in Munich by the Hoheneichen-Verlag , gave an official recommendation. Upon closer examination, however, it turned out that the name of the author, Helmut Steinberg, was a pseudonym of Heinrich Härtle , a former employee of Alfred Rosenberg . During National Socialism, Härtle had already published various political and ideological writings in the central publishing house of the NSDAP . His book from 1955 was basically a new edition of his work The ideological foundations of Bolshevism, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism , which had already been published in 1944 , in which, with an introduction by Rosenberg, “nationalist-racial realism” was propagated as a defense against communism because it corresponds to the “natural totality of the species inherent in National Socialism”. Härtle only revised the book in a few passages that glorified the Nazi regime.

The opposition in the Bundestag therefore called for Koch's dismissal and a suspension of subsidies for his institute. But the CDU interior minister at the time, Gerhard Schröder , fought off this demand and stood up for Koch.

Fonts

Monographs

  • Russian Orthodoxy in the Petrine Age. A contribution to the history of western influences on East Slavic thought . Wroclaw 1929.
  • The Church's Eastern Problem of the Present . Berlin 1931.
  • Byzantium, Ohrid and Kiev 987-1037 . In: Kyrios . Vol. IV (1938), pp. 253-292.
  • History of the Slavs / The Slavic World up to the time of Peter the Great . In: Propylaea World History II and III . 1940/1941.
  • Ukrainian poetry 1840–1940 . Wiesbaden 1955.
  • Limits and boundlessness of Eastern Europe . Isar-Verlag, Munich 1955.
  • with Alexander Adamczyk, Roman Hönlinger, Erik von Kaull and Helmut Neubauer: Soviet book. Cologne 1957.
  • with other authors: German-Slavic Presence. Lectures of the 2nd Eastern Seminar of the University of Political Sciences . Munich 1957.
  • Soviet ideology as a worldview and science . Bonn 1957.
  • Vistula-Warthe yearbook 1959 . 5th year. Munich 1959.
  • Theory, tactics, technology of world communism. A collection of quotes from Marx to Khrushchev . Pfaffenhofen 1959.
  • 5000 Soviet heads. Structure and face of a leadership collective . With the participation of Otto Böß and Günter Schäfer. Cologne 1959

Editorships

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl-Reinhart Trauner: "Treue um Treue". Josef Rudolf "Giselher" Beck, Oblt. 1893-1944 . In: Schriftenreihe Evangelischer Bund in Österreich / Standpunkte 140 (1995), pp. 3—34, here 4 u. 6th
  2. ↑ a b Christoph Dieckmann (Ed.): Cooperation and crime. Forms of “collaboration” in Eastern Europe 1939-1945. Göttingen 2003, p. 164, ISBN 3-89244-690-3 .
  3. ^ A b Roman Pfefferle, Hans Pfefferle: Glimpflich denazisiert. The professorships at the University of Vienna from 1944 in the post-war years. V&R unipress, Vienna 2014, p. 295.
  4. ↑ a b c Michail Shkarovskij: The Church Policy of the Third Reich towards the Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe (1939-1945). Münster 2004, p. 270, ISBN 3-8258-6615-7 .
  5. ↑ Michail Shkarovskij: The Church Policy of the Third Reich towards the Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe (1939-1945). Münster 2004, p. 27. (Source: BArch R5101 / 23173, p. 459–462)
  6. ↑ Thomas Wolf: The emergence of the BND. Construction, financing, control . Ed .: Jost Dülffer et al. (=  Publications of the Independent Historical Commission for Research into the History of the Federal Intelligence Service 1945–1968 . Volume 9 ). Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-96289-022-3 , pp. 65 ff .
  7. ^ Short biography of Hans Koch on the website of the Schewtschenko Scientific Society ; accessed on August 30, 2018 (Ukrainian)
  8. ↑ There is a brief description of the library on the institute's homepage .
  9. ^ Reinhard Heydrich Foundation, Prague .
personal data
SURNAME Koch, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steinberg, Helmut (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian, Eastern European historian and intelligence officer
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Lviv , Galicia , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1959
Place of death Munich