Charles K. Bliss

Bliss man and woman symbols

Charles Kasiel Bliss AM (* 1897 as Karl Kasiel Blitz in Chernivtsi , † July 13, 1985 in Sydney , Australia ) wanted to design his own font, which would help avoid misunderstandings between peoples through its clarity. His sign system should be designed in such a way that the meaning of the terms is immediately recognizable. The result was the Bliss symbols .

Examples of the Bliss symbols

Karl lightning grew up in a region of the kuk -Monarchie on, on the border of the Russian Empire, lived in the nine nationalities who were often hostile to each other. He was the first of four children from parents Michel Anchel and Jeanette Blitz. His father was very skilled in his craft and worked as an optician, mechanic and electrician.

Registration card of Charles K. Bliss as a prisoner in the National Socialist concentration camp Dachau

In 1922 Karl Blitz completed his studies as a chemical engineer in Vienna . He worked in research and became head of the patent department of his company. In 1938, after Austria was " annexed " to the German Reich, he was first sent to the Dachau concentration camp , and from there to the Buchenwald concentration camp . Thanks to the efforts of his wife Claire, he was released, but had to leave Germany. He went to the UK. But because of the outbreak of war in 1939, she was unable to follow him and then came to his family in Romania , from where she had to move on to her husband's friends in Greece . After Italian troops marched into Greece, they both decided to flee to a cousin in Shanghai . Claire made her way east across the Black Sea, the Trans-Siberian Railway , Manchuria and the Yellow Sea to Shanghai. Karl chose a different route across the Atlantic, Canada, the Pacific and Japan to China. At Christmas 1940 they were together again after three years of separation.

Life was not easy in Shanghai. Claire contracted typhus and was cared for by Karl. When Japanese troops conquered Shanghai, Karl, as a Jew, was forced to go to the ghetto in the Hongkou district . Claire followed him, although as a Catholic she could easily have divorced her husband.

In Shanghai, Karl Blitz became aware of the Chinese characters . A Chinese teacher explained to him that Chinese texts in different dialects can be read by people who cannot speak to each other. He learned some Chinese characters. He deciphered headlines in Chinese newspapers and translated them into German or English.

In 1942, Karl Blitz discovered the writings of Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain of Tokyo University . Chamberlain believed that one day ideograms would achieve an ultimate victory over phonetic scripts. This was perhaps the last impetus for Blitz to develop a pasigraphy .

In 1946, after the end of World War II, Karl and Claire relocated to Australia . In Sydney , however, Karl's knowledge was not in demand and he had to be content with minor jobs.

On weekends, the two of them researched in libraries and worked on the further development of “a font for one world and understanding across all language barriers”. The first name for this project was “World Writing”, then they decided on a more international name and coined the English name Semantography (from the Greek “sema” = sign + “graphein” = writing).

In 1949 Blitz published his work "International Semantography: A non-alphabetical symbol writing readable in all languages" (semantography: a non-alphabetical symbol writing that can be read in all languages).

This semantography was rated positively by Bertrand Russell and Lancelot Hogben , but otherwise met with little interest.

Claire sent more than 6,000 letters containing information on semantography to universities and educators around the world between 1949 and 1953. But these efforts were unsuccessful. Claire died on August 14, 1961.

In 1971 a Canadian organization for the disabled came to the decision to use semantography for the communication of spastically paralyzed children after reviewing a number of similar projects. Blitz had not originally thought of this target group, but in 1975 he granted the Canadian Blissymbolics Communication Foundation an exclusive license for the use of its symbols. But he was not at all satisfied with the use of his semantography.

Web links

• Biography in English on www.blissymbolics.us ( Memento from January 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive )