Revilo Pendleton Oliver

This article is about a 20th century American author who published under the pen name Paul Knutson . For the equitable Norwegian navigator of the 14th century, see Paul Knudson .

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Revilo Pendleton Oliver (1963)

Revilo Pendleton Oliver (born July 7, 1908 in Corpus Christi , Texas , † August 10, 1994 in Urbana , Illinois ) was the American professor of Classical Philology , Spanish and Italian at the University of Illinois .

Life

Revilo P. Oliver was born on July 7, 1908 near Corpus Christi, Texas, USA. The decision of his parents to give the son a palindromic name is - according to Oliver - due to a family tradition that goes back six generations. Young Oliver attended high school in Illinois for two years , then in California . The boy was very linguistically gifted and began to teach himself the highly inflected Sanskrit language, but soon reached his limits, but was able to find an Indian teacher who gave Oliver private lessons. At the age of 16, he moved to Pomona College in Claremont , California.

In 1930 Oliver married Grace Needham. At the University of Illinois, he began studying Classical Philology, which he completed in 1940 with a doctorate. phil. ( Philosophiae Doctor ); Oliver's PhD supervisor was Prof. William Abbott Oldfather .

From 1941 to 1945 Oliver worked in the War Department, then moved back to the Philological Faculty of the University of Illinois (from 1945 as Assistant Professor , from 1947 as Associate Professor and from 1953 as Professor ). Until his retirement in 1977 he lectured on classical philology. Oliver mastered a total of twelve languages, among which Latin - he was considered an expert on difficult translation issues - and Sanskrit stood out.

Revilo P. Oliver was one of the founders of the anti-communist " John Birch Society " in 1958 , which excluded him in 1966 because of his openly displayed racism. - Until the 1960s, Oliver could be regarded as a representative of American conservatism , but he increasingly approximated National Socialist convictions - or at least their US-American interpretation. He ended up working with Dr. William L. Pierce's organization “ National Alliance ”, which can be viewed as a cultural-political Nazi association. 1970/1971 he was a member of the advisory board of the " National Youth Alliance ". Oliver gave lectures on historical, political, religious and racial issues and published countless articles in various right-wing and anti-Jewish periodicals, e.g. B. the Journal of Historical Review , the National Review or the Liberty Bell . In some cases, Oliver published his posts under a pseudonym , including Ralph Perier and Paul Knutson .

Oliver, who suffered from leukemia and severe emphysema that had caused his decades of nicotine addiction , shot himself at the age of 86 on August 10, 1994 in Urbana, Illinois to avoid further suffering from his illness.

Web links

• Entry on Revilo Pendleton Oliver in the Database of Classical Scholars (English)