Karl Lehmann (S1939)

Karl Otto Lehmann (1939) was 101 and a half when he died on 2^nd September 2022.

He arrived at Leighton Park in 1936 from Cologne, Germany, where conditions were no longer safe for him. Karl always stressed how welcome he was made to feel by LP staff and pupils and how this helped him to adapt quite quickly to a new language and a new way of life. Indeed, his integration was so successful that his brother, Hans Georg, joined him at Leighton Park in 1937. Karl represented the school at athletics, hockey, rugger, captained the tennis team and was made a prefect.

At Oxford Karl read French and German. But being an “enemy alien”, he was summoned by the police and taken off with others to spend six months at internment camps in Paignton, Shropshire and the Isle of Man. This turned out to be not as bad as might have been: fellow internees, many of them academics, set up classes, debating societies, a drama group, so that camp life was quite versatile muting the inmates’ fear about the future.

After returning to Oxford to complete his degree, Karl joined the BBC Monitoring Service, first at Evesham, then Reading, where he listened to and translated German wartime broadcasts, including the one on first May 1945 announcing the death of Adolf Hitler. Karl continued at the Monitoring Service after the war retiring in 1981 as Editor News and Publications.

Throughout his life Karl maintained strong links with Leighton Park attending events and holding regular summit meetings with John Allinson. He played tennis into his nineties and pursued his main passion, following the horses, to the very end. As he explained in an LP interview a few years ago: This is an excellent retirement occupation because there is a problem every morning and a solution every afternoon. A day before he died Karl said Cancel the Racing Post!

Helga Lehmann