Testimonial letter from Wolfgang Hochheimer
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. Wolfgang Hochheimer. It is "Exhibit A-1738" 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.
 FREIE UNIVERSITÄT BERLIN To whom it may concern: The Office of the Ashram Rajneeshpuram/Oregon asked me about a possible recommendation of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. My statement looks as follows: Being; a full professor of Psychology at the Free University Berlin I am busy in all fields of Psychology, especially in the fields of Social, Educational and Anthropological Psychology. I am a member of the"German Psychological Association", further a foundation-member of the "German Association for Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Psychology of the Depth". I am engaged, too, on Religious Affairs and studied any jears with my intimate friend Paul TILLICH, who was very famous, too, in your country. One day I had to register that any students of mine transgressed to the Poona Ashram of Rajneesh. Occasionally on an Ethnological trip to Nepal and India I decided a glance at the Poona Ashram. Surprisingly enough, my stay took any weeks. I felt deeply impressed by the personality of that remarkable man. He proved to be as a religious leader and teacher of highest quality, efficiency and large-sized caliber. I understood immediately the reaction of my students and other you_th(?) His profound knowledge and wisdom about all religious systems and problems seems to me unique. In addition to that superiority he appears as corporation of warmness and love of men. Returned to my Varsity I accepted the desire of a student to work or a field-study about the Poona-Ashram. This two-years-project of vard ous quantitative and qualitative methods obtained by the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences the degree "magna cum laude". In summary I feel and am obliged to recommend every possible furtherance and promotion of the Rajneeshpuram-project with his very rema(?) kable founder. As far I see, it would be a big loss, not to further the warm, friendly and peaceful "Sannyasins" with her lucid religious master Sincerely, |
(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.)
