IN MEMORIAM |Andreas Tietze, professor emeritus of Turkish in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, died of a cerebral hemorrhage on Dec. 22. He was 90. Tietze was a member of the department from 1958 to 1973, chair 1965-70, and subsequently occupant of the chair in Turcology at the Institute for Oriental Studies, University of Vienna, Austria, 1973-1984.

A world-renowned Turcologist and one of the founders of Turkic studies in the United States, Tietze was best known for his contributions to Turkish lexicography, his work on Turkish riddles and Turkish Karagoz (Blackeye) plays, his editions and translations of Ottoman works, and his founding and editorship of an annual, multilingual bibliography covering all aspects of Turkish and Ottoman life. He was also a translator of modern fiction: from German to Turkish, from Turkish to German, and from Azerbaijani to Turkish.

His friends, colleagues, and former students in both the U.S. and Europe, remember him affectionately for his encyclopedic knowledge, high standards, diligence, modesty, accessibility and willingness to offer his assistance with their problems.

Tietze was born on April 26, 1914 in Vienna, the son of prominent art historians Hans Tietze and Erica Conrad-Tietze. He studied history and languages at the University of Vienna from 1932 to 1937, spent one semester at the Sorbonne in 1933, and received his doctorate from the former institution in 1937. A diary of two trips he made to Anatolia in 1936-37, kept by one of his companions, a photocopy of which is now in the archives of the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, remains one of perhaps only two firsthand accounts by foreign visitors of life in those early days of the Turkish Republic as lived in the countryside outside of
Istanbul and Ankara ( Unsere Anatolienreise, and Die Zweite Anatolienreise).

With the Nazi advance in Europe, Tietze moved to Istanbul in 1937, joining many other prominent German and Austrian émigré scholars who found refuge in Turkey and employment at Istanbul University. There he was a lecturer in German from 1938 to 1952, and a lecturer in English from 1953 to 1958. In addition to his teaching, he was an editor of a series of 16 titles, Istanbuler Schriften, that included his first reader for foreign students of Turkish, Türkisches Lesebuch für Auslaender (Istanbul, 1943), written jointly with S. Lisie.

He was also active in the field of folklore as co-editor and contributing translator on the Orientalist Hellmut Ritter’s monumental study of the Blackeye shadow puppet theater, Karagöz: türkische Schattenspiele (3 vols, Hanover, 1924-1953). It was at this time too that he became deeply involved in lexicography. He prepared a Turkish-German dictionary (Türkçe-Almanca Sözlügü, ?1942) with Ritter, and from 1946 to 1958 he was director of the American Board Publication Office project to revise the original Redhouse English-Turkish Dictionary of 1861 and the companion Redhouse Turkish-English Dictionary of 1890. Both works, now further updated, remain indispensable to students of Turkish.

In 1958 Tietze became associate professor of Turkish and Persian at UCLA, one of the first appointments in the field of Near Eastern Languages at the university; in 1960 he became professor of Turkish. To meet the needs of his students, he published two readers sorely needed in those years when instructional materials, especially beyond the elementary level, were in short supply, Turkish Literary Reader and Advanced Turkish Reader: Texts from the Social Sciences and Related Fields (Indiana University, 1963 and 1973 respectively). Both works are still used by students today.

While at UCLA Tietze authored numerous articles and continued his research on folklore. Comparing the oldest collection of Turkish riddles, those found in a section of the 14th-century document known as the Codex Cumanicus, with related riddles from other Turkic sources, he described a new vision of this early work in The Koman Riddles and Turkic Folklore
(University of California Press, 1966).

In recognition of his outstanding qualities as a teacher, he received a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1971. Throughout his tenure at UCLA Tietze was instrumental in building up the holdings of Turkish and Ottoman books and manuscripts at the University Research Library (now the Young Research Library), making it the home of one of the largest collections of such works in the U.S. and the largest collection in the West.

After spending the academic year 1971 as a visiting professor in the Institute for Oriental Studies at the University of Vienna, Tietze returned there in 1973 to occupy the chair in Turcology. In the same year he assumed the editorship of the journal Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, a leading European journal for Near Eastern Studies.

Following his retirement in 1984, Tietze continued to teach at the University of Vienna as well as at Bosphorus University in Istanbul. In 1991 he published an annotated transcription of what appears to have been the first original novel written in Turkish, Vartan Pasha’s Akabi Hikayesi
of 1851, a work little known and without influence because it was printed in the Armenian characters for Armenian readers who spoke Turkish but had difficulty with the Arabic script at that time used for Turkish.

In the final years of his life Tietze also embarked on perhaps his major project: a historical and etymological dictionary of the Turkish of Turkey (Tarihi ve Etimolojik Türkiye Türkçesi Lugatž). He lived to see the publication of only the first volume [A-E] of the projected seven-volume work (Simurg Istanbul-Vienna, 2002), but additional letters were ready for publication. Over a long productive life Tietze received numerous awards for his service to the field, including four volumes in his honor (festschriften). He will be remembered by the students he inspired and through his many enduring contributions to Turcology. May those who honor his memory see his final project to a successful conclusion.

He was buried on Jan. 8, 2004 in the 18th regional municipal cemetery of Vienna. He is survived by his wife, the former Süheyla Uyar, and four children, Phyllis, Denise, Noor, and Ben.