Background
He was born in Prague, Austria-Hungary, and educated at the Piarist School in Prague and the Benedictine Abbey school in Kremsmünster, Austria.
He was born in Prague, Austria-Hungary, 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.
He held academic posts in Austrian and German universities. Roger Casement was in correspondence with Pokorny in Austria from Berlin in March 1916. He also served as a reservist in the Austrian Army during World War I.
In 1920, he succeeded Kuno Meyer as Chair of Celtic Philology at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin.
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.
In 1954, he received an honorary professorship at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where he taught part-time in 1956 and again from 1960 to 1965. He was awarded honorary degrees by the University of Wales at Swansea in 1965 and Edinburgh University in 1967.
Death
He died in Zurich in 1970 almost three weeks after being hit by a tram not far from his home.
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.