René Köhler was a spurious conductor invented by William Barrington-Coupe as part of a fraud scheme in which he passed off numerous plagiarised copyrighted sound recordings of several classical pianists as the work of his wife, Joyce Hatto.
In 1940, according to the biography provided by Barrington-Coupe, his left hand was crushed irreparably by a young German officer.
Barrington-Coupe issued several recordings of piano music which, he claimed, featured Hatto as the pianist.
For those recordings that featured an orchestral accompaniment, Barrington-Coupe credited Köhler as the conductor, allegedly directing the spurious "National Philharmonic-Symphony" and "Warsaw Philharmonia" orchestras.
[2] Details of the biography resemble that of the conductor and composer Stanisław Skrowaczewski, who was born in Poland, had originally trained and performed as a pianist, but suffered from a hand injury during World War II which left him unable to play.