Johannes Pohl

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Johannes Pohl (born February 6, 1904 in Cologne , † January 30, 1960 in Wiesbaden ) was a German priest , National Socialist , Judaist , Hebraist and librarian .

Life

After graduating from high school , Pohl, whose father was a trucking company, studied Catholic theology in Bonn . In 1927 he was ordained a priest, whereupon he received a vicariate in Essen . The doctorate followed in 1929 . He then went to study the Bible and language at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome , where he received his doctorate for the second time.

Pohl received a scholarship from the Görres Society and went to their Oriental Institute in Jerusalem for further studies in 1932 , where he also worked for the German Association of the Holy Land . In Jerusalem he met his future wife, who was one of the German colonists. In 1934 they both returned to Germany and married that same year. Pohl was employed at the Prussian State Library in the Oriental Department as a Hebraist from 1935 to 1936 and from 1939 to 1941.

Pohl, who had meanwhile been dismissed from his position as a cleric , became increasingly enthusiastic about National Socialism . He wrote for the communications on the Jewish question published by the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question , as well as for the anti-Semitic weekly newspaper Der Stürmer . The Nazi Party , he joined the 1940th

During the Second World War , Pohl came into contact with the Rosenberg Office . Following on from these connections, in 1941 he became a librarian at the Institute for Research into the Jewish Question in the "Jewish Library", a centerpiece of the high school. The institute was headed by Wilhelm Grau and, like other Nazi institutions, belonged to the high school of the NSDAP . On behalf of Alfred Rosenberg , Pohl traveled to the occupied territories as a member of the ERR in order to "sift through" useful literature in libraries, which meant stealing usable for Nazi propaganda . In January 1942, Pohl was involved in the robbery and destruction of Jewish cultural property in Vilnius . He had the most valuable books and manuscripts stolen from Wilner's museums and libraries. He then selected a small fraction for the planned museum in Frankfurt. He sold the rest to a paper mill. In addition, he was fully committed to the propaganda of his clients and published a large number of anti-Semitic writings, in which he mainly attacked the spiritual foundations of Judaism and the Talmud . From autumn 1943 Pohl worked for Rosenberg's anti-Semitic magazine Welt-Dienst .

After the end of the war, Pohl was interned for a year. Several of his writings were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet zone of occupation and in the German Democratic Republic . From 1953 he worked at Franz Steiner Verlag and, according to his own statements, had been a member of the Duden editorial team in Wiesbaden for years .

Fonts

  • The Messiah expectation from the prophet Ezekiel. Dissertation. University of Bonn, 1929.
  • Work, Family and Society in Israel according to the writings of the prophets. Dissertation. Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, 1931.
  • Talmudic spirit. Nordland, Berlin 1941.
  • The religion of the Talmud. Fritsch, Berlin 1942.
  • Jews in the Soviet Union at the beginning of Stalin's rule. Holzner, Tilsit, Leipzig 1942.
  • A thousand Talmud quotes. Welt-Dienst, Frankfurt am Main 1944.
  • Anti-Jewish papal decrees. Welt-Dienst, Frankfurt am Main 1944.
  • Streiflichter from the New York Yiddish "Forwerts". Welt-Dienst, Frankfurt am Main 1944.
  • Is there a Jewish religion? Welt-Dienst, Frankfurt am Main 1944.
  • Jewish testimonies. Welt-Dienst, Frankfurt am Main 1944.
  • Palestine: the country and its people . Welt-Dienst, Frankfurt am Main 1944

literature

  • Maria Kühn-Ludewig: Johannes Pohl (1904–1960). Judaist and librarian in the service of Rosenberg. A biographical documentation. Laurentius, Hannover 2000, ISBN 3-93161-410-7 .
  • Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 .
  • Ulrike Hartung: Deported and missing. A documentation of German, Soviet and American files on Nazi art theft in the Soviet Union (1941–1948). Temmen, Bremen 2000, ISBN 3-86108-336-1 .
  • David E. Fishman: The book smugglers: partisans, poets, and the race to save Jewish treasures from the Nazis , Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge, [2017], ISBN 978-1-5126-0049-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 418.
  2. ↑ Abraham Sutzkever: Wilner Getto 1941–1944 . Translated by Hubert Witt, Ammann, Zurich 2009. ISBN 978-3-250-10530-5 , p. 120.
personal data
SURNAME Pohl, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German priest, National Socialist, Judaist, Hebraist and librarian
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1960
Place of death Wiesbaden