Dmitri Alfred Borgmann (October 22, 1927 – December 7, 1985) was a German-American author best known for his work in
recreational linguistics.
Early life
Borgmann was born on October 22, 1927, 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 ...
, Germany, to Hans and Lisa Borgmann. Fearing that the Nazi government would discover Lisa's Jewish ancestry, the family fled to the United States in 1936, and settled in
Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
.
Borgmann graduated from the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
in 1946 and found work as an
actuary
An actuary is a professional with advanced mathematical skills who deals with the measurement and management of risk and uncertainty. These risks can affect both sides of the balance sheet and require investment management, asset management, ...
. In 1964 he quit his job to focus on his writing.
In 1971, he started his own research and manuscript writing business, INTELLEX, which employed up to 15 writers at a time to
ghost-write and edit short stories, academic books, and TV and movie scripts. Borgmann eventually relocated the company and his family to
Dayton, Washington.
Writing career
Borgmann first attracted media attention for his skill with words in 1958, when over the course of eight weeks he defeated 22 challengers in a row on
WGN-TV
WGN-TV (channel 9) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, serving as the local outlet for The CW. It is owned and operated by the network's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, and is sister station, sister to the company ...
's ''It's In The Name'', winning nearly $3,800.
Around this time he also started contributing word puzzles and trivia to "Line o' Type or Two", a column in the ''
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...
''. Much of this material was mined from back issues of ''The Enigma'', the official journal of the
National Puzzlers' League which he had joined in 1956.
By 1964, he had established himself as "the country's leading authority on word play",
a designation he continued to hold up until the time of his death.
His first book, ''
Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical Oddities'', was published by
Scribner's
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City that has published several notable American authors, including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjo ...
in 1965, and received critical acclaim from major magazines and literary journals, including ''
Time
Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' and ''
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...
''.
Today it is best remembered for popularizing the word ''
logology'' to refer to the field of recreational linguistics; Borgmann himself is often referred to now as the "Father of Logology".
The publicity generated by ''Language on Vacation'' led to Borgmann being contracted by industrial design firm
Loewy & Snaith to invent brand names for their clients. For this work he is widely cited as the creator of "
Exxon
Exxon Mobil Corporation ( ) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Founded as the largest direct successor of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the modern company was form ...
", which
Standard Oil
Standard Oil Company was a Trust (business), corporate trust in the petroleum industry that existed from 1882 to 1911. The origins of the trust lay in the operations of the Standard Oil of Ohio, Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founde ...
adopted as its new name after paying Borgmann a $10,000 fee.
At $2,000 per letter, commentators joked that this made Borgmann the most highly paid writer in history.
''Language on Vacation'' also attracted the attention of puzzle author
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing magic, scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writin ...
, who in 1967 recommended Borgmann as the editor for
Greenwood Periodicals's new magazine ''
Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics''. Borgmann edited the magazine for its inaugural year, but resigned after Greenwood refused to meet his salary demands.
When Greenwood appointed fellow logologist
Howard W. Bergerson to succeed him as editor-in-chief, Borgmann refused to ever speak to him again.
A follow-up to ''Language on Vacation'', entitled ''
Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought'', was published in 1967; it was less successful but still attracted favorable reviews.
Borgmann also edited and annotated a book on
crossword puzzle
A crossword (or crossword puzzle) is a word game consisting of a grid of black and white squares, into which solvers enter words or phrases ("entries") crossing each other horizontally ("across") and vertically ("down") according to a set of cl ...
s, 1970's ''Curious Crosswords''. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, he was a regular writer for the ''Chicago Tribune'', ''
Games
A game is a Structure, structured type of play (activity), play usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an Educational game, educational tool. Many games are also considered to be Work (human activity), work (such as p ...
'', and ''
Puzzle Lovers Newspaper'', and continued to contribute articles to ''Word Ways''.
(Much of this writing was published under pseudonyms, including El Uqsor, Jezebel Q. XIXX, Ramona J. Quincunx, and Prof. Merlin X. Houdini.)
He also sponsored "Jackpot Jubilee", a series of word contests.
Later life and death
In the late 1970s, Borgmann founded a
new religious movement
A new religious movement (NRM), also known as a new religion, is a religious or Spirituality, spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. NRMs can be novel in origin, or they can be part ...
, the Divine Immortality Church, and took out ads in ''
New Times'', ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 185 ...
'', ''
Mother Jones'' and other magazines, offering
ordainment certificates and
divinity degrees.
He also advertised the church in ''
Hustler'', encouraging the publisher to omit the first T in "Immortality". As many as a hundred people joined the movement.
Borgmann had a reputation for being reclusive to the point of
eccentricity
Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to:
* Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal"
Mathematics, science and technology Mathematics
* Off-Centre (geometry), center, in geometry
* Eccentricity (g ...
, a characteristic which intensified in his later years. None of his colleagues from publishing—not even his literary agent
Joseph Madachy, nor Martin Gardner, who got Borgmann the editorship of ''Word Ways''—ever met him personally. His successors at ''Word Ways'', Howard W. Bergerson and
A. Ross Eckler, Jr., never met him either.
Borgmann's home life was even more secluded; most external and internal windows were boarded up or covered with heavy drapes, and
mirror
A mirror, also known as a looking glass, is an object that Reflection (physics), reflects an image. Light that bounces off a mirror forms an image of whatever is in front of it, which is then focused through the lens of the eye or a camera ...
s were not permitted in the house. Borgmann rarely left his cluttered upstairs room, sometimes working secretively for weeks without seeing his family. Though he was diagnosed with a heart condition, he refused to take his prescribed medication, and eventually succumbed to a
heart attack
A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...
on December 7, 1985, at the age of 58.
He was survived by his wife of 23 years, Iris Sterling, and their two sons, Mark and Keith.
After his death, Eckler and Borgmann's son Keith went through his papers, finding material for a number of articles which were published posthumously in ''Word Ways''.
The Special Collections and University Archives of the
Stanford University Libraries
The Stanford University Libraries (SUL), formerly known as "Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources" ("SULAIR"), is the library system of Stanford University in California. It encompasses more than 24 libraries in all. S ...
has collected and preserved correspondence between Borgmann and Martin Gardner, dating from 1956 to the 1980s, across 19 folders of its Martin Gardner Papers.
Bibliography
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Borgmann, Dmitri
Writers from Berlin
Writers from Chicago
Writers from Washington (state)
People from Dayton, Washington
1927 births
1985 deaths
Word Ways people
Palindromists
Contestants on American game shows
University of Chicago alumni
Chicago Tribune people
German male writers
20th-century American writers
20th-century American male writers
German people of Jewish descent
Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States
German magazine founders