Charles Berlitz - Life

Life

Berlitz was born in New York City. He was the grandson of Maximilien (Maximilian) Berlitz, who founded the Berlitz Language Schools. As a child, Charles was raised in a household in which (by his father's orders) every relative and servant spoke to Charles in a different language: he reached adolescence speaking eight languages fluently. In adulthood, he recalled having had the childhood delusion that every human being spoke a different language, and wondering why he did not have his own language like everyone else in his household. His father spoke to him in German, his grandfather in Russian, his nanny in Spanish.

He began working for the family language school, The Berlitz School of Languages, during college breaks. The publishing house, of which he was vice president, sold, among other things, tourist phrase books and pocket dictionaries, several of which he authored. He also played a key role in developing record and tape language courses. He left the company in the late 1960s, not long after he sold the company to publishing firm Crowell, Collier & Macmillan. He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University.

Berlitz was a writer on paranormal phenomena. He wrote a number of books on Atlantis. In his book The Mystery of Atlantis, he claimed Atlantis was real, based on his interpretation of geophysics, psychic studies, classical literature, tribal lore, and archeology. Berlitz also attempted to link the Bermuda Triangle to Atlantis.Berlitz claimed to have located Atlantis undersea in the area of the Bermuda Triangle. Berlitz was also an ancient astronaut proponent who believed that extraterrestrials had visited earth.

Berlitz spent 13 years on active duty in the U.S. Army, mostly in intelligence. In 1950, he married Valerie Seary, with whom he had a daughter, Lynn. He died in 2003 at the age of 89 at University Hospital in Tamarac, Florida.