Testimonial letter from Harde Klaus Henkel

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This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.

This letter is from Dr. Harde Klaus Henkel. It is "Exhibit A-573" in the Noles collection.

The text version below has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription. Most apparent "errors" are correct transcriptions of typos already in the original. The image on the right in the text box links to a pdf file of the original letter, it has one page.

Dr. Harde Klaus Henkel
Wilhelm Raabe Weg 35
2110 Buchholz
WEST GERMANY
July 23, 1983

To Whom It May Concern,

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh contributes, through his unique depth of understanding of the situation and needs of modern man, more significantly to the importance of free enterprise in a free world than any contemporary scientist or politician.

I am a doctor of legal sciences from the University of Hamburg, specialised in economics and industrial psychology. I have been an aide to Professor Dr. E. Schellenburg (vise-president of the SPD and member of German Parliament), vice-president of the Joint Legal Committee of the German Coal Mining Industry, editor and author, university Professor, 5 years director of the legal department of Germany’s largest coal mining and energy company (100,000 employees, worldwide sales in excess of 10 Billion DM) and management consultant. Also I have conducted extensive workshops (together with Dr. Erik Henkel and Dr. Leky of Bonn University) in management and industrial psychology.

I have traveled extensively and personally visited Rajneeshpuram where I have been surprised and impressed by their management practices. The Rajneeshees have experimented successfully with a lot of modern management and workers participation problems (e.g. motivation at work, job rotation, horizontal structured management instead of vertical hierarchy, etc.) -Problems which are not yet solved in western industrial world. It is my observation that the presence of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is the key motivation of all which is already achieved. Modern science of management and industrial psychology can learn a lot out of what is happening there in this huge experimental field of management, business and worker participation.

Yours Truly,
[signed]
Dr. Harde Klaus Henkel


(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)