Julius Pokorny

Julius Pokorny (12 June 1887 – 8 April 1970) was an Austrian-Czech linguist and scholar of the Celtic languages, particularly Irish, and a supporter of Irish nationalism. He held academic posts in Austrian and German universities.

He was born in Prague, Bohemia under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and educated at the Piarist School in Prague and the Benedictine Abbey school in Kremsmünster, Austria. From 1905 until 1911, he studied at the University of Vienna, graduating in law and philology, and he taught there from 1913 to 1920.

During World War I, Pokorny was involved in pro-German propagandist activities, inciting the Irish against England. He is known to have met and corresponded with Roger Casement, an activist for Irish independence who was executed in 1916. Pokorny also served in the war as a reservist in the Austrian (Cisleithanian) Army starting in 1916.

In 1920, he succeeded Kuno Meyer as Chair of Celtic Philology at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Although baptised Catholic at birth and being sympathetic to German nationalism, he was suspended in 1933 under the Nazi Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, because of his Jewish ancestry. He was reinstated later that year under the exemption for those who had worn the uniform of Germany or its allies in World War I, which had been insisted on by President Paul von Hindenburg before he signed the bill into law. In 1935, he was dismissed under the provisions of the racist Nuremberg Laws. He continued to live more or less openly in Berlin until at least 1939, but lived a shadowy existence there from around 1940. He escaped to Switzerland in 1943, where he taught for a few years at the University of Berne and at the University of Zurich until his retirement in 1959.

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