Gustav Bayerle died on 12 October 2016 in San Jose, California, at the age of 85. A refugee immigrant to the United States after the 1956 Hungarian revolution, Dr. Bayerle was a longtime faculty member and department chair at Indiana University. He was respected for his scholarship, his mentoring of students, and his leadership within the Turkish Studies Association of North America.
In the fall of 1956 Gustav's studies in Finno-Ugrian philology at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest were interrupted by the Hungarian revolt against Soviet occupation. Gustav's initial role in the rebellion was helping publish the revolutionary student newspaper, but a few days later he joined the Freedom Fighters and, when Soviet tanks and troops attacked he fought alongside others in the doomed battle to defend Budapest. After the fighting ended his unit threw down their arms in a church yard and disbanded. When one of their group disappeared overnight, Gustav and a friend fled across the Austrian border. He arrived in New York in December, and the following year was admitted to the University of Rochester. After receiving his B.A. in 1960, he entered Columbia University for doctoral study with Turkologist Tibor Halasi-Kun, himself an earlier Hungarian émigré.
After earning the Ph.D., now Dr. Bayerle was recruited in 1966 to join an impressive international team of scholars then being assembled in a department—unique in American higher education—of Uralic and Altaic Studies (now Central Eurasian Studies) at Indiana University. There he stayed for three decades, teaching Hungarian literature and history, Ottoman Turkish language and history, and his signature seminar, “Sources of Ottoman history.” Very early he embraced the personal computer and urged students like me into research that harnessed its capacity for data quantification and analysis. Gustav was chosen to succeed Denis Sinor, the powerful and charismatic founder and only head of the department since its creation. Sinor himself wrote that, in guiding the department through the decade of the 1980s, Gustav introduced democracy by creating committees, holding faculty meetings, and taking votes. He “belonged to that rare category of chair who, at the end of a long meeting, can ask with deep sincerity whether anyone wishes to say anything more.” He and his family hosted department Christmas parties at their home, where Gustav's homemade glögg left everyone in a joyous holiday mood.
In the close-knit field of Turkish and Ottoman studies in the United States, Gustav exercised effective leadership. He enjoyed the collegiality of the annual MESA meetings. He edited The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin from 1979–1984 and then served for two years as the association's president. A skilled paleographer and philologist, Dr. Bayerle was recognized for his authoritative research on Ottoman cadastral registers and the structure of Ottoman control in Hungary. This work is reflected in several technical articles and in books, especially Ottoman Diplomacy in Hungary: Letters from the Pashas of Buda, 1590–1593 (1972), Ottoman Tributes in Hungary according to the Sixteenth Century Tapu Registers of Novigrad (1973), and The Hungarian Letters of Ali Pasha of Buda, 1604–1616 (1991).
Gustav's personal sensitivity and humaneness, and ready laugh, are fondly remembered by his students. Lynne Şaşmazer remembers his “infectious love of Ottoman history and language, delighting in an obscure fact or a clever turn of phrase. He instilled in me his own fascination with the texts themselves—he admired beautiful script and illumination, and loved to reminisce about his work with rare manuscripts. He also taught me much about work-life balance. I knew he was very proud of me when we attended my Ph.D. commencement together, but he really beamed when I told him that my husband and I were expecting our first child. And he taught me a lot about wine—he said that the study of Ottoman history required a good Cabernet, and he was exactly right. I toast to him every time I find a good bottle.”
Even while suffering from dementia in his last years, Gustav was almost always in good spirits and good physical condition. After his beloved wife Telle, a concert pianist whom he had met at Rochester, died unexpectedly in 2015, he lived in an assisted care Alzheimer's facility across the street from one of their two sons in San Jose. He saw his grandchildren often and still enjoyed a cup of tea or glass of wine. His family, friends, colleagues, and students will miss him dearly.
