POSCH, Udo. Wolfsburg, Kärnten 7.9.1922 — 1965. Austrian Turcologist and Tibetologist in the U.S.A. Originally he was a student of Duda in Turcology at Vienna University, but had quarreled with his teacher. Then he wrote a Tibetological dissertation to R. Bleichsteiner and was conferred Ph.D. 1949 (Vienna). In 1952 he taught at Graz University as Lecturer of Turkomongolian and Tibetochinese languages, but was soon employed for Turcology in Seattle (University of Washington), where he arrived in 1953. As a teacher he showed up to be a failure, and soon it was found out that his unpublished dissertation on Tibetan verbal prefixes was a fake, a mere translation of American dissertation submitted by von Koerber at Los Angeles in 1939. He was fired from the university, became later a drug addict and died in prison during the 1960s.
Publications: Diss. Beiträge zur Problematik der Wortbildungsdynamik im Sino-Tibetischen (Indochinesischen) mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des tibetischen Verbalbaues. Manuscript of 8+269 p. Vienna 1949 (a fake, see above).
– Articles on Altaic linguistics.
Sources: N. Poppe, Reminiscences. Western Washington 1983; Graz Univ. Personalverzeichnis 1950/51; *CAJ 11, 1966, 144-146 (bibliography of Altaic publications).
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