In the 19th century, there was an internationalist movement toward standardization of things like weights and measures, and even languages. The hope was that it would make the world more peaceful by different people having more in common. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Neutral, rich, picturesque Switzerland. What a great place to hold international conferences. Not just for the attendees but for the country. The conference recognized on todays stamp attracted over 1600 people for 8 days of activities. The hot air balloon on the stamp suggests that all waking hours were not filled with business. Conferences like this bring a lot of money into in this case Lucerne. The conferences often also bring important personages to town, for the benefit of all. I wonder how many locals in Lucerne were inspired to take up the study of Esperanto.
Todays stamp is issue A277, a 70 Centimes stamp issued by Switzerland on February 21, 1979. It publicized the annual World Esperanto Congress being held that July in Lucerne. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 70 cents used.
The language of Esperanto was the work of Polish ophthalmologist L.L. Zamenhof. His work grew out of an earlier effort of his to standardize Yiddish. He soon expanded his efforts to construct a universalist language that would be simple to learn and incorporated aspects of Hebrew, Latin, and German. He dispensed with verb conjugation, He also attached adverbs and adjectives to the noun as is done in German. The alphabet is a simplified Latin. This achieved a shorter alphabet and many fewer words. The hope was that it would replace French as the language of diplomacy and make literacy more achievable by new countries starting out with public education. The language achieved many adherents and was an official language for a part of Belgium(Moresnet) that was jointly administered by the Dutch and the Prussians. Shah era Iran was also a big user and the type of country that was rapidly trying to expand literacy. The League of Nations in 1935 suggested Esperanto as a second language of instruction for member countries. Dr. Zamenhof was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Esperanto became most common among Eastern European and Soviet Communists, who were heavily Jewish in the interwar period. As such opposition popped up. France felt the language was a challenge to French being the language of diplomacy. Hitler was dismissive of Esperanto, saying it was just a method of uniting Jewish diaspora around the world. He banned the teaching of the language in Germany. In 1937 there was a more unexpected blow. Stalin declared it a language of spies and banned its use. This was during his purges and many Jews were targeted at the time.
Post war the language has continued to lose momentum. There are still annual congresses and the United Nations has repeated the suggestion that member states teach Esperanto as a second language. The fact that is a secondary language to all it’s users means that even after a hundred years there has been little reversion to slang as is otherwise common. In 2017 a new smartphone app called Amikumu was launched that helped find nearby speakers of a certain language. The first language it started with was Esperanto.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Switzerland. A country with three languages might think that was enough and some thought Esperanto abandoned Switzerland while the organization avoided Hitler and Stalin. Yet still they hosted the conference and thought it important enough for a stamp issue, always a high honor. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.