Tietze was born on April 26, 1914, in the early months of
World War I to art historians
Hans Tietze and
Erica Tietze-Conrat. He studied at the
University of Vienna, focusing on economic history under
Alfons Dopsch, as well as East European and Balkan history and
Slavic,
Turkic,
Persian, and
Arabic languages. He received his doctorate in 1937 with the thesis
Die Stellungnahme der italienischen Wirtschaftstheoretiker des 17. Jahrhunderts zu den agrarischen Problemen. Prior to receiving his doctorate, Tietze had already traveled to Turkey. Due to his Jewish background, the rise in
Antisemitism caused him to move to Turkey in 1937. His parents relocated to the United States in 1938 for the same reason. While in Turkey, Tietze furthered his studies of Turkish, publishing a Turkish reader for beginners in 1943 and serving on the editorial committee for the revised edition of
James Redhouse's Turkish dictionary. In 1952, Tietze's reputation as a linguist led to an invitation to the
University of Illinois. In 1957 he accepted
Gustave E. von Grunebaum's invitation to join the new Near East Center at the
University of California, Los Angeles. In 1974, Tietze returned to the
University of Vienna to direct their Oriental Institute. While there he published translated and annotated editions of Ottoman court texts and founded the journal
Turkologischer Anzeiger () in an attempt to compile a bibliography of the growing number of works on
Turkology. Tietze retired from the University of Vienna in 1984, but continued to work. At age 80 he began work on an etymological dictionary of Turkish. The first volume was published in 2002. At the time of his death in 2003, he was working on the letter "S"; the remaining volumes were published posthumously. == Selected works ==