An Esperantist Italian Count in New Mexico

From his passport
application for the trip
that cost his life

Okay, I’m not positive he was a count. A newspaper article says that he was, though it’s clear that the late twentieth century was the last gasp for spuriously claiming noble heritage. Of these, the Esperanto movement had its share, from the (so-called) Marquis de Beaufront to the not-descended-from-whom-she-claimed Winifred Sackville Stoner.[1] For the record, I am not descended from great French writer.[2]

He was an Italian and an Esperantist. That was easy to document. Luigi Martini Mancini was born in Florence, Italy in July 1871 and emigrated to the United States in about 1890 (this is what he claimed on a 1916 emergency passport application, but on the 1900 Census, he said 1895). At the time that he was named a delegate to the 1907 Universala Kongreso, he would have been thirty-five years old. He had become a United States citizen in 1902.

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Professor Schinz, the Accuser of Esperanto

Professor Claims Esperanto a German Plot

To recap: On November 25, 1916, the New York Sun published a letter by Creston Coigne about how Esperanto was progressing despite the war. This occasioned a response on December 2 from Professor Albert Schinz of Smith College, who essentially accused a British Esperantist who was covertly corresponding with a German Esperantist friend of treason, and suggested that the only reason that the Germans were putting war dispatches out in Esperanto was to disrupt the likelihood of French and English being the co-international languages, and advance the cause of German. To this, on December 11, Jozefo Silbernik, Dr. Zamenhof’s brother-in-law, and an active Esperantist in New York City, showed that Professor Schinz’s contention that the Germans did this because they knew they would lose the war was false, since the Germans started the dispatches before getting officially involved in the war.

Not enough for Professor Schinz. On December 12, 1916, he’s back in the pages of the Sun with a further question for the Esperantists. At this point, I had to look ahead; Professor Schinz gets the last word. After initial enthusiasm for Esperanto, French academics had somewhat soured on it, and I suspect Professor Schinz got his view of Esperanto from his French colleagues. His real issue seems to be the prospect of French as one of the world’s languages of international use.

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Silbernick Defends German Use of Esperanto

Acquitted? Was it on trial?

The New York Sun published a lengthy letter about Esperanto on December 11, 1916. It’s long enough that I was inclined to quote it only in part, until I reached the bottom and saw who wrote it: Joseph Silbernik. The first time I wrote about Mr. Silbernik, it was quickly pointed out to me (thanks!) that Silbernik was the maiden name of Klara Zamenhof. Her father, Marcus Silbernik, funded the publication of the the Unua Libro. I have since learned that Joseph Silbernik was Klara Zamenhof’s brother.

Or so says a page on the Esperanto Wikipedia. There is no source for the assertion, but it seems to work out. Joseph Silbernik was about 21 years younger than Aleksandro Silbernik (Klara’s father). Another Silbernik relative, Joseph Levite (Klara’s brother-in-law) lived in Warsaw, and it was at his home that Ludovik met Klara.[1] But like Ludovik, Joseph was born in Bialystok, about seven years before Ludovik. It looks like there were a number of intersections between the Zamenhof and Silbernik families.

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Esperantists — The Kaiser’s Fools

Professor Albert Schinz
Thought Esperanto
a German plot

So claimed a letter in the New York Sun on December 2, 1916. The Germans had been putting out war dispatches in Esperanto, which some Esperantists viewed as a real success for Esperanto. Albert Schinz, of Northampton, Massachusetts didn’t see it that way.

Just as in 1908, when Esperantists felt that the use of Esperanto by Moresnet would taint Esperanto with regional politics, Professor Schinz felt that the Germans were propagandizing the Esperanto movement. Yes, “Professor Schinz.” It took a small amount of work to determine that Albert Schinz was a professor of French at Smith College when he wrote the letter. He was a fairly prolific scholar with many books and articles to his credit.

If it not clear if he was an Esperantist, however, he does note that he knew Esperantists, and he wrote an article in the January 1906 Atlantic Monthly describing and sympathetic of Esperanto. In the Atlantic article, he states that he is not an Esperantist, yet did say he managed to write a short letter to De Beaufront after an hour of study. Yet, in the December 1916 Amerika Esperantist, there’s a short article on Professor Schinz’s letter, noting that Schinz is responding to a letter by Creston Coigne, which had appeared in the November 25 Sun.[1] The Esperantists at this point, seem to have no idea who the man is, referring to him as "one Albert Schinz."

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Our Boys in France, Speaking Esperanto

Esperanto gets called a threat.
Again.

I wasn’t sure where to put this one, since what follows is abstracted from a series of letters to the editor. The first letter was sent by James McKirdy to two newspapers. The New-York Tribune ran it on August 31, 1917 and the Sun on September 2. Joseph Silbernik wrote an expansion on Mr. McKirdy’s letter, which appeared in the Tribune on September 6, while the Sun published a rebuttal on that same day. Mr. Silbernik responded to the rebuttal in the Sun on September 17, and then again on the 25th. (I could have put it on any of those dates.)

The Sun was not promoting Esperanto, to put it mildly. While the Tribune titled Mr. McKirdy’s letter merely “Esperanto for Soldiers,” the Sun after headlining the letter “Protect Our Soldiers!” made it clear from the subhead from what they needed to be protected: “Awful Threat to Impose the Study of Esperanto on Them.” Ouch. Likewise, the rebuttal was titled “The Question of Teaching Our Soldiers in France No Man’s Tongue,”[1] and the rebuttal was “Esperanto in France: Blithe Enumeration of Some of Its Eminent Victims.”

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