North Dakota News of Esperanto

Civilization demands Esperanto!

The Pioneer Express of Pembina, North Dakota got to Esperanto fairly early. In July 1901, most people in the United States were completely unaware of Esperanto. There had been the occasional reference beforehand (dating all the way back to Esperanto’s introduction in 1887), but as Esperanto neared its fourteenth birthday, out of the slightly more 5,567 Esperantists (that number being the final name in the listings that ended for January 14, 1901), almost none were Americans.

[Digression 1. Esperantist 5,567 was Miss Ingeborg Bergqvist, of Södertelge, Sweden, and her name had been sent in by J. J. Süssmuth.]

[Digression 2. It’s not a solo project to create, so I won’t be the one, but it would be great to have a database of the early Esperantists listed in these directories. I really don’t want to type in tens of thousands of names; I just don’t have the time. Really, we need people to take ranges of a couple hundred names at a shot. Then I could simply search to find out how many Americans were in the international movement. Series XXI of the Adresaro de la Esperantistoj includes two Americans, neither of them in North Dakota.]

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Esperanto’s Savior?

Savior or traitor?

The August 4, 1907 New York Sun had a lengthy piece on Esperanto (almost two columns), and I won’t be quoting it in full here (maybe another time, because it is a valuable early document in the press). Instead, I’m going to focus on just the first six paragraphs.

I don’t believe that everything in the article “Pioneers of Esperanto” is accurate, because already in the first six paragraphs, there are problems. The opening of the article largely focusses not on Ludovik Zamehhof and the creation of Esperanto, but instead on Marquis Louis de Beaufront, the early Esperanto advocate, who soon after this article was published would introduce his “revised Esperanto” project, Ido.

The Sun describes de Beaufront as someone who has to be taken in “almost equal regard” as Zamenhof himself. Since the article was published, 107 have gone past, and we can look at de Beaufront somewhat differently. One thing that has become clear was the he was a great self-promoter and self-mythologizer.

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You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

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This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!