Biography
Born September 11, 1917 in Vienna, Austria, Engelmann arrived in the United States in 1939, just two weeks before World War II broke out in Europe. Having fled first to Czechoslovakia and later to France as a result of the German annexation of Austria in 1938, he worked as a laborer in the fields of France until he was able to sail to America, as recorded in Journey Into a New Life.
Following graduate school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison he taught at Michigan State University in East Lansing, at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb. Towards the end of the 1950s he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research. He was the first editor of the Wisconsin Sociologist 1960-62, then again in 1965-70. In 1963 Engelmann was president of the Wisconsin Sociological Association. He appeared in Who’s Who in America in 1989. He is named in Austrian Social Scientists in Exile 1933-1945.
In the 1960s Engelmann regularly participated in civil rights marches and was a strong advocate for racial and gender equality at a time when neither could be taken for granted even at universities. In the early 1970s one of his papers - an analysis of bussing and neighborhood schools—was quoted in a successful desegregation suit of Milwaukee Public Schools initiated by Lloyd Barbee.
From 1969 until he retired Professor Emeritus in 1989 he taught, wrote, and traveled throughout the US and Europe. Retirement did not change much. He continued his active correspondence with colleagues and former students for 30 years and more. He remained active in sociology until his death on February 2, 2002 in DeKalb, Illinois.
His wife Ruth is author of Leaf House: Days of Remembering. Their son John is a lawyer and is sometimes a co-author of Engelmann’s articles.
Read more about this topic: Hugo O. Engelmann
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
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