Testimonial letter from Hermann Steinkamp
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. Hermann Steinkamp. It is "Exhibit A-42" 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 will link to a pdf file of the original letter when the pdf is created. It has one page.
 Prof. Dr. Hermann Steinkamp To whom it may concern By this letter I want to appeal for Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to be allowed to live and work in the USA. I am a professor of theology teaching sociology of religion at the University of Münster, at this moment I am the Dean of the Departne of theology at that University. Personally I do not know Mr. Bhagwan, but I beared an read many about and of him. Some of my friends are members of the Bhagwan movement and they made me appreciate most of his religious thoughts and ideas. I think Bhagwan and his movement to support the humanistic ideals of personal growth an of peace and I am sure they never will vote or work for making war. Therfore I would like Bhagwan to be allowed to stay and live in the United States of America. [signed] |
(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.)
