L. L. Zamenhof (15 December 1859 – 14 April 1917) was the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language.
Zamenhof published Esperanto in 1887, although his initial ideas date back as far as 1873. He grew up fascinated by the idea of a world without war and believed that this could happen with the help of a new international auxiliary language (IAL). The language was intended as a tool to gather people together through neutral, fair, equitable communication.Guilherme Moreira Fians, Hoping for the language of Hope , University of Amsterdam, ACLC Seminar, Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR), He successfully formed a community which has survived to this day, despite the World Wars of the 20th century and various attempts to reform the language or create more modern IALs (Esperanto itself had displaced another similarly-motivated language, Volapük). Additionally, Esperanto has developed like other languages: through the interaction and creativity of its users.Humphrey Tonkin, Fourth Interlinguistic Symposium, p. 213, JKI-12-2017 (pdf).
In light of his achievements, and his support of intercultural dialogue, UNESCO selected Zamenhof as one of its eminent personalities of 2017, on the 100th anniversary of his death.Fourth Interlinguistic Symposium, p. 209, JKI-12-2017. According to Esperanto communities, as of 2019 there are approximately 2 million people speaking Esperanto, including approximately 1,000 native speakers, although evidence to that has been heavily disputed, and the last major effort to improve the estimate occurred in 2004.
Name
Zamenhof came from a multilingual area. His name is transliterated as follows: – English pronunciation: – – – –
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Born into an Ashkenazi family, at his birth Zamenhof was given the common Hebrew name Eliezer by his parents, which is translated into English as Lazarus. However, as the area was a part of the Russian Empire at the time, his name was recorded on his birth certificate as , using the Yiddish form of the forename and a russified version of his surname;Birth Certificate N 47: "Leyzer Zamengov, son of Mordkha Fayvelovich Zamengov and Liba Sholemovna Sofer" many later Russian language documents also include the patronymic « son of Mark » (in reference to his father, Markus), as is the custom in the language. His family name is of German origin and was originally written Samenhof; this was later transcribed into Yiddish as , then re-romanized back as Zamenhof. The change of the initial letter from «S» to «Z» is not unusual, as in German an initial «s» is pronounced .
In his adolescence, he used both the Yiddish Leyzer and the Russian Lazar when writing his first name. While at university, Zamenhof began using the Russian name Lyudovik (also transcribed Ludovic or translated as Ludwig) in place of Lazar, possibly in honour of Francis Lodwick, who in 1652 had published an early conlang proposal. When his brother Leon became a doctor and started signing his name "Dr L. Zamenhof", Zamenhof reclaimed his birth name Lazar and from 1901 signed his name "Dr L. L. Zamenhof" to avoid confusion with his brother. The two Ls do not seem to have specifically represented either name and the order Ludwik Lejzer is a modern convention.
Early years
Zamenhof was born on 15 December 1859, the son of Mark and Rozalia Zamenhof (), in the multi-ethnic city of Belostok in the Russian Empire (now Białystok in Poland). He went to a cheder until age 13, and later to secondary school in Warsaw. He developed an interest in poetry and drama, and wrote several pieces, including a five act play about the Tower of Babel.
He appears to have been natively bilingual in Yiddish and Russian, however according to Zamenhof himself he used to speak mainly in Polish. His father was a teacher of French and German. From him, Zamenhof learned both languages, as well as Hebrew. He also spoke Belarusian, which was popular in Białystok. Polish became the native language of his children in Warsaw. In school, he studied the classical languages Latin, Greek, and Aramaic. He later learned some English, though in his own words not very well. He had an interest in Italian and Lithuanian and learned Volapük when it came out in 1880. By that time, his international language project was already well-developed.Christer Kiselman, "Esperanto: Its origins and early history" , in Andrzej Pelczar, ed., 2008, Prace Komisji Spraw Europejskich PAU, vol. II, pp. 39–56, Krakaw.
In addition to the Jewish Yiddish-speaking minority, the population of Białystok included Polish Catholics and the Russian Orthodox (the latter of whom were mainly government officials), with smaller groups of Belarusians, Germans and other ethnicities. Zamenhof was saddened and frustrated by the many quarrels among these groups. He supposed that the main reason for the hate and prejudice lay in the mutual misunderstanding caused by the lack of a common language. If such a language existed, Zamenhof postulated, it could play the role of a neutral communication tool between people of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.
As a student at secondary school in Warsaw, Zamenhof attempted to create an international language with a grammar that was rich, but complex. When he later studied English, he decided that the international language must have simpler grammar. Apart from his parents' native languages Russian and Yiddish and his adopted language Polish, his projects were also aided by his mastery of German, a good passive understanding of Latin, Hebrew and French, and a basic knowledge of Greek, English and Italian.Holzhaus, Adolf: Doktoro kaj lingvo Esperanto. Helsinki: Fondumo Esperanto. 1969
His project, Lingwe uniwersala, was finished by 1878. He went to Moscow the next year to study medicine. While there, he experienced the rise of antisemitism in the Russian Empire at the time, and became involved with Zionism. He returned to Warsaw to finish his studies and began an ophthalmology residency in 1885. He began his practice as a doctor in Veisiejai. After 1886, he worked as an ophthalmologist in Płock and Vienna. While healing people there, he continued to work on his project of an international language.
He moved to Grodno and became involved in Zionism again, and later began to develop a new religion, Hillelism, later called Homaranism. For two years, he tried to raise funds to publish a booklet describing the language, until he received financial help from his future wife's father. In 1887, the book titled Международный языкъ. Предисловіе и полный учебникъ (International language: Introduction and complete textbook) was published in RussianKeith Brown and Sarah Ogilvie, Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World (Elsevier, 2009: ), p. 375. under the pseudonym "Doktoro Esperanto" (Doctor Hoper, or literally "Doctor One Who Hopes"). Zamenhof initially called his language "Lingvo internacia" (international language), but those who learned it began to call it Esperanto after his pseudonym, and this soon became the official name for the language. For Zamenhof, this language, far from being merely a communication tool, was a way to promote peaceful coexistence between people of different cultures.
Homaranismo
Besides his linguistic work, Zamenhof published a religious philosophy he called Homaranismo (the term in Esperanto, usually rendered as "humanitism" in English,Meaning in the Age of Modernism: C. K. Ogden and his contemporaries , Thesis of James McElvenny, 2013 sometimes rendered loosely as humanitarianism or humanism), based on the principles and teachings of Hillel the Elder. He said of Homaranismo: "It is indeed the object of my whole life. I would give up everything for it."Edmond Privat, The Life of Zamenhof, .
Yiddish language and Jewish issues
In 1879, Zamenhof wrote the first grammar of Yiddish. It was partly published years later in the Yiddish magazine .Vilnius, 1909; see Esperanto translation as (On Yiddish grammar and reform in Yiddish) in (A Hebrew from the ghetto: From Zionism to Hillelism), , vol. 5, 1976 The complete original Russian text of this manuscript was only published in 1982, with parallel Esperanto translation by Adolf Holzhaus, in (An attempt at a grammar of neo-Jewish language), Helsinki, pp. 9–36. In this work, not only does he provide a review of Yiddish grammar, but also proposes its transition to the Latin script and other orthographic innovations. In the same period, Zamenhof wrote some other works in Yiddish, including perhaps the first survey of Yiddish poetics (see p. 50 in the above-cited book).
A wave of pogroms within the Russian Empire in 1882, including Congress Poland, motivated Zamenhof to take part in the Hibbat Zion, and to found a Zionist student society in Warsaw. He left the movement following the publication of Unua Libro in 1887, and in 1901 published a statement in Russian with the title Hillelism, in which he argued that the Zionist project would fail due to Jews not having a common language.
In 1914, he declined an invitation to join a new organization of Jewish Esperantists, the TEHA. In his letter to the organizers, he said, "I am profoundly convinced that every nationalism offers humanity only the greatest unhappiness ... It is true that the nationalism of oppressed peoples – as a natural self-defensive reaction – is much more excusable than the nationalism of peoples who oppress; but, if the nationalism of the strong is ignoble, the nationalism of the weak is imprudent; both give birth to and support each other". The Hebrew Bible is among the many works that Zamenhof translated into Esperanto.
Death Zamenhof died in Warsaw on 14 April 1917, possibly of a heart attack,"Ludwig Lazar Zamenhof – Founder of Esperanto" , Department of Planned Languages. and was buried at the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery. The farewell speech was delivered by the chief rabbi and preacher of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw, Samuel Abraham Poznański, who said: "There will be a time where [sic] the Polish soil and nation will understand what fame gave this great son of God to his homeland."
Family Zamenhof and his wife Klara Silbernik raised three children, a son, Adam, and two daughters, Zofia and Lidia. Lidia, in particular, took a keen interest in Esperanto, and as an adult became a teacher of the language, travelling through Europe and to America to teach classes in it. Through her friendship with Martha Root, Lidia became a member of the Baháʼí Faith. As one of its social principles, the Baháʼí Faith teaches that an auxiliary world language should be selected by the representatives of all the world's nations.
All three of Zamenhof's children were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust., p. 116 : "Between world wars, Esperanto fared worse and, sadly, became embroiled in political power moves. Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that the spread of Esperanto throughout Europe was a Jewish plot to break down national differences so that Jews could assume positions of authority.... After the Nazis' successful Blitzkrieg of Poland, the Warsaw Gestapo received orders to 'take care' of the Zamenhof family.... Zamenhof's son was shot... his two daughters were put in Treblinka death camp."
Zamenhof's grandson through Adam, Louis-Christophe Zaleski-Zamenhof, lived in France from the 1960s until his death in 2019, and his daughter, , is still active in the Esperanto movement.
Honours and namesakes