Background
Karl Heinrich Menges was born on April 22, 1908, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His father, a member of a famous family, was a magistrate of the county court.
Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Menges studied in Frankfurt and Munich and earned his doctorate at the University of Berlin in 1932.
Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Menges studied in Frankfurt and Munich and earned his doctorate at the University of Berlin in 1932.
https://www.amazon.com/Turkic-languages-peoples-introduction-studies/dp/B007EIDL4I/?tag=2022091-20
1968
https://www.amazon.com/Altajische-Studien-Abhandlungen-Morgenlandes-German/dp/3515018840/?tag=2022091-20
1975
Karl Heinrich Menges was born on April 22, 1908, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His father, a member of a famous family, was a magistrate of the county court.
His primary and secondary education Menges received from 1914 to 1926 in his hometown. He also studied at three German universities - Frankfurt (1926-1927), Munich (1927-1928), Berlin (1928-1932), in which he attended lectures and seminar classes of prominent Slavists M. Fasmer (1886-1962), E. Berneker (1874-1937), A. Bruckner (1856-1939), Turkologist W. Bang (1869-1934), Semitologist and Turkologist G. Bergstresser (1886-1933).
Later Menges graduated from the University of Berlin with a Doctor of Philosophy in Slavic and philologist-Turkologist.
Menges also listened lectures at Moscow State University and studied Slavic manuscripts at the State Historical Museum in Moscow. Menges repeatedly visited the Soviet Union, studying the Turkic and Tungus-Manchu languages.
Early in career, Menges became a junior research fellow at the East Branch of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Since the early 1930s, Menges, who called himself a Catholic centrist, joined the fight against Nazism, distributed anti-fascist literature, and organized meetings and speeches in public forums. In 1936, he was arrested by the Gestapo, interrogated for five hours, accused of high treason, and temporarily released pending trial. Menges was forced to flee first in Czechoslovakia (Prague, 1936-1937), and then to Turkey (1937-1940), where he taught Russian as a professor at Ankara University.
In 1940, Menges settled in the USA, having received the post of lecturer in the Department of East European Languages at Columbia University (New York). Later, at Columbia University, Menges gave lectures and taught special courses in ancient Uigur, Turkish, Chagatai and Turkic languages of Siberia; in the future, the range of attracted material was significantly expanded, which allowed him to develop an extensive cycle of lectures on Altai philology. Due to his solid general philological training, knowledge of a number of Eastern, Altai, Slavic and West European languages, Menges quickly gained the authority of a major specialist in Slavic and Altai philology, which found its formal expression in conferring on him the title of professor (Associate Professor) in 1947 Slavic and Altai languages.
In 1976, upon reaching retirement age, he was dismissed with retirement. After his retirement from Columbia he taught at the University of Vienna until shortly before his death in Vienna at the age of 91.
Menges was an indispensable scholar of over twenty-five languages, primarily of the Altaic group, that are spoken in the former Soviet Union.
An expert on languages unfamiliar in the United States, he became a professor of Altaic and Uralic languages at Columbia University, where he taught for 36 years. Some of his works include The Oriental Elements in the Vocabulary of the Oldest Russian Epos, "The Igor Tale” published in 1951, People and Languages of the Caucasus, written with Bernhard Geiger in 1959, and The Turkic Languages and Peoples, which was published in 1968. In 1956, he was awarded the title of professor of Altai philology.
Menges was also awarded a Bronze Medal from the University of Helsinki in 1960, a Gold Medal from the University of Uppsala in 1968, and a Guggenheim fellowship in 1972.
Menges was a member of the editorial committees of two oriental journals and was elected a member of a number of scientific societies.
