Otto John Maenchen-Helfen (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

: Otto Mänchen-Helfen; July 26, 1894 – January 29, 1969) was an

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n academic,

sinologist Sinology, also referred to as China studies, is a subfield of area studies or East Asian studies involved in social sciences and humanities research on China. It is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of the Chinese civilizatio ...

, historian, author, and traveler. From 1927 to 1930, he worked at the Marx-Engels Institute in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

, and from 1930 to 1933 in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. When the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

came to power in Germany, he returned to Austria, and after the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...

in 1938 he emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, eventually becoming a professor at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. He was the author of several oft-cited books, including a history of the Huns. He was the first non-Russian to travel and report on

Tannu Tuva The Tuvan People's Republic (TPR), known simply as Tannu Tuva, was a partially recognized socialist republic that existed between 1921 and 1944 in North Asia. It was located in the same territory as the former Imperial Russian protectorate of ...

. He obtained permission to travel there and study its inhabitants in 1929. He later published his experiences in a book, ''Reise ins asiatische Tuwa'' (Travels in Asiatic Tuva).

Selected list of works

* Mänchen-Helfen, Otto (1931). ''Reise ins asiatische Tuwa.'' Berlin: Der Bücherkreis. Translated into English in 1992 (''see'' below). * Mänchen-Helfen, Otto (1932). ''Rußland und der Sozialismus. Von der Arbeitermacht zum Staatskapitalismus''. Berlin: Dietz. * Nicolaevsky, Boris (author), and Maenchen-Helfen, Otto (translator) (1936). ''Karl Marx: Man and Fighter.'' (First published 1933 in German. Many English editions; some of them restore the notes, appendices, and bibliography omitted from the first English edition.) * Maenchen-Helfen, Otto J. (1944-45a). ''Huns and Hsiung-Nu.'' ''Byzantion'', vol. 17, pp. 222–243. * Maenchen-Helfen, Otto J. (1944-45b). ''The Legend of the Origin of the Huns." ''Byzantion'', vol. 17, pp. 244–251. * Maenchen-Helfen, O. (1945). "The Yueh-chih Problem Re-examined." ''Journal of the American Oriental Society,'' vol. 65, p. 71–81. * Maenchen-Helfen, O. (1951). "Manichaeans in Siberia." ''Semitic and Oriental Studies Presented to William Popper,'' ed. by Walter J. Fischel. University of California Publications in Semitic Philology, vol. 9. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. * Maenchen-Helfen, Otto J. (1973). ''The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture.'' Ed. by Max Knight. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. . (Edited and enlarged in a 1978 German translation; ''see'' below.) * Maenchen-Helfen, Otto J. (1978). ''Die Welt der Hunnen: Eine Analyse ihrer historischen Dimension.'' Vienna, Cologne, and Graz: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf. * Mänchen-Helfen, Otto (1992). ''Journey to Tuva.''; Trans. and annotated by Alan Leighton, with an introduction by Anna Maenchen. Ethnographics Press Monographs Series, edited by Gary Seaman, no. 5. Los Angeles: Univ. of Southern California Ethnographics Press. .

Selected list of works

References

Further reading