Turning the pages back...

July 7, 1894

Hans Koch was born in Lviv on July 7, 1894. In 1918, he joined the Ukrainian Galician Army as a captain and took part in the conflicts of the next two years.

In 1924, he graduated with a doctorate in history from the university, and over his career served as a professor of East European history at Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), Breslau (now Wroclaw), Vienna and Munich. He published a memoir of his experiences in the independence struggle, "Dohovir z Denikinom" (Agreement with Denikin) in 1931.

In 1939-1940, Prof. Koch was a member of the German repatriation commission and helped a number of Ukrainians escape the Soviet occupation of western Ukraine.

He also served as director of the East European Institute in Breslau in 1937-1940, and later in Munich from 1952, and was made a full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in 1949.

Prof. Koch was a specialist in Ukrainian Church history, publishing articles on the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (1928), the early relationship between Byzantium and Kyiv (1938), the theory of "Moscow as the Third Rome" (1953), as well as a monograph on Ukraine and Protestantism (1954). He also translated works of Ukrainian literature into German.

Prof. Koch died in Munich on April 9, 1959.

Source: "Koch, Hans," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol. 2 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988).

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 7, 1996, No. 27, Vol. LXIV

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