Ernst Pöhner

Ernst Pöhner (11 January 1870, Hof, Bavaria – 11 April 1925) was Munich's Chief of Police ('Green' Police President) from 1919 to 1922. A vigorous nationalist and anti-communist (he attempted, for example, to have Ostjuden or "Eastern Jews" expelled from Bavaria after the downfall of the Communist Bavarian Soviet Republic under the leadership of Eugen Levine was defeated in 1919), he was instrumental in mounting terror and in supporting the Organisation Consul[1] paramilitary units. Confronted with the charge that entire groups of right-wing political assassins were at large and working in and around Munich, he is reported to have said: "Yes ... but too few of them."[2]

Ernst Pöhner
Born
Ernst Pöhner

(1870-01-11)11 January 1870
Hof, Germany
Died11 April 1925(1925-04-11) (aged 55)

He was closely linked to Gustav von Kahr, who had staged his own putsch in 1920 but who opposed the 1923 Hitler putsch. Pöhner was a central figure in the Hitler putsch being named as Bavaria's prime minister on the night. He was subsequently convicted with Hitler in 1924 for five years, but released three months later, dying in a mysterious car accident in 1925. He is mentioned in Mein Kampf.

Further reading
  • John Dornberg, The Putsch That Failed, Hitler's Rehearsal for Power, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982.
  • Harold J Gordon Jr, Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch, Princeton University Press, 1972.
  • Die Chronik der Stadt Hof, Band VIII, Ausgabe 1936. (German)

References
  1. Waite, Robert G L, Vanguard of Nazism, 1969, W W Norton, p. 213
  2. Ernst Röhm, Die Geschichte eines Hochverräters, Eher Verlag, Munich, 1928, p. 116
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