Testimonial letter from Hermann Wöhle
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 Hermann Wöhle. It is "Exhibit A-163" 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.
 Hermann Wöhle TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I am the commissioner of the police force in Hamburg, West-Germany. After college and subsequent studies, my career began as a police patrol officer. During the 25 years I have been in police work, I have been a member of different security planning staffs and organizations, and have been responsible for special security services. I was an assistant professor at the police academy, spokesman for the chief of police in Hamburg and a member of the organizational committee for the XXth Olympic Games in Munich. I met Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for the first time in 1981 in Poona, India, after having read various books by him. Bhagwan is a religious teacher of exceptional abilities and deep insight into human behaviour. His religious teachings have had a tremendous impact on my life and occupation, which is now much more strongly influenced by a positive vision of man. If his philosophy were put to practical use throughout the world in the same way as it is being lived in Rajneeshpuram, criminal behaviour would be cut back drastically. For me, Rajneeshpuram is the most important social experiment of this century. This model of a humane society would not be possible without Bhagwan's vision. Bhagwan’s exceptional abilities as a philospher and psychologist will find significant recognition in many fields relating to human behaviour. [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.)
