Ernst Pöhner

Ernst Pöhner (January 11, 1870, Hof, Bavaria – April 11, 1925) was Munich's Chief of Police ('Green' Police President) from 1919 to 1922. A vigorous, right radical and anti-semite (he attempted, for example, to have Eastern Jews expelled from Bavaria in 1919), he was instrumental in mounting terror and in supporting the Organisation Consul death squads. Confronted with the charge that entire groups of right-wing political assassins were at large and working in and around Munich, he is reported to have said: "Yes ... but too few of them."

He was closely linked to Gustav von Kahr, who had staged his own putsch in 1920 but who opposed the 1923 Hitler putsch. Pöhner was a central figure in the Hitler putsch being named as Bavaria's prime minister on the night. He was subsequently convicted with Hitler in 1924 for five years, but released three months later, dying in a mysterious car accident in 1925. He is mentioned in Mein Kampf.

Further reading

• John Dornberg, The Putsch That Failed, Hitler's Rehearsal for Power, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1982.
• Harold J Gordon Jr, Hitler and the Beer Hall Putsch, Princeton University Press, 1972.
• Die Chronik der Stadt Hof, Band VIII, Ausgabe 1936. (German)