Charles (L. Frambach) (Charles-Francois Bertin) Berlitz (1914-2003) Biography

See index for SATA sketch: Born November 22, 1914, in New York, NY; died December 18, 2003, in Tamarac, FL. Linguist and author. The grandson of the founder of the famous Berlitz language schools, Berlitz was a former president of Berlitz Publications who later became well known for his books on such bizarre topics as the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, UFOs, and secret military experiments. Learning a variety of languages from his family at a very young age, he naturally went on to study languages as a student at Yale University, where he earned an A.B. in 1936. It is also unsurprising that his career began as a language teacher at the Berlitz Schools of Language in New York City in 1934. After serving in the U.S. Army Reserve as an intelligence officer during World War II, Berlitz became president of Berlitz Publications, where he remained until the company was bought out in 1967 by another publisher. He spent the rest of his life as a freelance writer, continuing to teach himself new languages while pursuing interests in archaeology and the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle and Atlantis. He wrote on these subjects in such books as The Mystery of Atlantis (1969), The Bermuda Triangle (1974), Without a Trace: New Information from the Triangle (1977), Atlantis, the Eighth Continent (1984), and The Dragon's Triangle (1989). He also wrote about UFOs in The Roswell Incident (1980), the mystery of the location of Noah's Ark in The Lost Ship of Noah: In Search of the Ark at Ararat (1987), and other unusual subjects in such books as The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility (1979) and Doomsday: 1999 A.D. (1981). While critics often found fault with Berlitz's theories of the unexplained, his contributions to language education cannot be denied; he was the author or coauthor of over fifty books on teaching foreign languages, and he helped develop foreign language programs on audiotape for young students and established business courses in languages for adults.