{"id":492,"date":"2020-09-04T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2020-09-04T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/?page_id=492"},"modified":"2022-01-28T11:27:44","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T10:27:44","slug":"5-do-we-understand-each-other","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.lasteuropeans.eu\/en\/jewish-perspectives-on-the-crises-of-an-idea\/5-do-we-understand-each-other\/","title":{"rendered":"Do We Understand Each Other?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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Installation Do We Understand Each Other? Photo: Dietmar Walser<\/p><\/div>\r\n

Having grown up in Bia\u0142ystok, now Poland, a formerly multiethnic, multireligious, and polyglot city in the Russian Empire, Ludwik Zamenhof (1859\u20131917) began already early on to think about a new, universally understandable language. Like some of his contemporaries, he hoped to improve international and ethnic relations through the development of a easily graspable universal language. He was convinced that \u201cdivision and hate among the nations will completely disappear only when all of humanity will have one language and one religion.\u201d In 1887, the son of a Yiddish-speaking mother and a usually Russian-speaking father published his \u201cplanned language\u201d under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto (the hopeful). This would soon become the name of the invented language. Its logical structure and possibly also Zamenhof\u2019s translation of the Hebrew Bible into Esperanto contributed to the fast dissemination of the language\u2014and to the formation of an international movement propagating it. Already in 1905, the first World Esperanto Congress took place in Boulogne-sur-Mer, which was followed by annual conventions around the world.<\/p>\r\n

^ Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, ca. 1900, \u00a9: Austrian National Library, Picture Archive<\/em><\/p>\r\n

< Poster for the World Esperanto Congress in Warsaw 1937, \u00a9 Austrian National Library, Picture Archive<\/em><\/p>\r\n

> Quotes regarding the rejection of the Zamenhof-year by the Bia\u0142ystok municipal council, December 2016, \u00a9 mounted by G\u00fcnter Kassegger, \u00a0source:\u00a0www.esperanto.de
<\/em><\/p>\r\n

Esperanto had the potential of becoming a common language in a united Europe. Yet, politics and language is always also a matter of power. Hence, several national languages have prevailed for use in EU bodies and not Esperanto. However, UNESCO has paid tribute to the significance of this linguistic utopia. Zamenhof\u2019s death anniversary was included in the official list of UNESCO commemoration days for 2017. Then again, the Bia\u0142ystok municipal government failed to display any particular interest in the city\u2019s illustrious son who had worked to enable Europeans to better understand each other. When in 2016, a motion was made in the municipal council to commemorate him with an official program on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his passing in 2017, it was rejected with the votes of the national-conservative PiS (\u201cLaw and Justice\u201d) party. Esperanto, it was argued, had no longer any significance today. This decision was originally reported only in several Polish newspapers. However, when this was brought to international attention by the newsagency Agence France-Presse<\/em> and then by Yahoo<\/em>, reports about Ludwik Zamenhof\u2019s repudiated heritage and the PiS party\u2019s nationalist anti-Semitism were published all over the world.<\/p>\r\n

Liliana Feierstein (Berlin): About Esperanto as a Jewish, European, and International language<\/strong><\/p>\r\n