Eugen Kogon

Eugen Kogon (2 February 1903 – 24 December 1987) was a historian and Nazi concentration camp survivor. A well-known Christian opponent of the Nazi Party, he was arrested more than once and spent six years at Buchenwald concentration camp. Kogon was known in Germany as a journalist, sociologist, political scientist, author, and politician. He was considered one of the "intellectual fathers" of both West Germany and European integration. Early years Kogon was born in Munich, the son of an unmarried Russian-Jewish mother from Mykolaiv, then part of the Russian Empire now Ukraine. When he was 2 years old, she died and he was given foster parents and later attended a Catholic boarding school. He spent the larger portion of his youth in Catholic monasteries. After studying economics and sociology at the universities in Munich, Florence, and Vienna, Kogon received his doctorate in 1927 in Vienna with a dissertation on the Faschismus und Korporativstaat ("Corporate State and Fascism"). That same year, Kogon got a job as editor of the Catholic magazine Schönere Zukunft ("Brighter Future") and stayed there till 1937. Through his work, he made the acquaintance of sociologist Othmar Spann, who recommended him for the Zentralkommission der christlichen Gewerkschaften ("Central Committee of Christian Unions"). Kogon was an advisor there several years later. In 1934, after the July Putsch, Kogon took over the asset management of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Koháry for Prince Prince Philipp of Saxe-Coburg. Nazi resistance An avowed opponent of Nazism, Kogon was arrested by the Gestapo in 1936 and again in March 1937, charged with, among other things, "work[ing] for anti-national socialist forces outside the territory of the Reich". In March 1938, he was arrested a third time and, in September 1939, was deported to Buchenwald, where he spent the next six years as "prisoner number 9093". At Buchenwald, Kogon spent part of his time working as a clerk for camp doctor Erwin Ding-Schuler, who headed up the typhus experimentation ward there. According to Kogon's own statements, he was able to develop a relationship bordering on trust with Ding-Schuler, after becoming his clerk in 1943. In time, they had conversations about family concerns, the political situation and events at the front.