Letter to Alfred Michaux

Moved by a lifelong interest in language reform as a key to improving human relations, Ludwik Leyzer Zamenhof took an interest in Hebrew and Yiddish linguistics and language reform, but is best known for his creation of and advocacy for the world’s most famous constructed language, Esperanto. Born in the largely Jewish city of Białystok in the Russian Empire (today in Poland), Zamenhof received a traditional heder education before attending a public gymnasium. In 1873, Zamenhof moved to Warsaw and produced a prototype of a constructed language intended to serve as an international peace-building lingua franca. In 1879, he moved to Moscow to pursue a medical degree and also wrote a Yiddish grammar. After returning to Warsaw, Zamenhof used the prototype he had created as a student and refined over the years to publish the language textbook Lingvo internacia under the pen name Doktoro Esperanto in 1887. The name Esperanto—“one who hopes” in Zamenhof’s language—was adopted as the name for the language, and Zamenhof spent the following decades promoting its use. Around the same time, he wrote foundational texts for a religion based on the teachings of the tannaitic sage Hillel; this religion of rational ethics was intended to accompany the spread of his international language. Zamenhof edited the leading Esperanto journals La Esperantisto (1889–1895), Lingvo Internacia (1895–1914), and La Revuo (1906–1914), and he wrote many original texts as well as numerous translations into Esperanto. In 1905, he hosted the first Esperanto conference in Boulognesur-Mer, France; shortly thereafter the language was codified in his Fundamento de Esperanto. World War I largely disabused Zamenhof of the idea of a universal human culture. His daughter, Lidia Zamenhof, a follower of the Bahai religion, carried on much of his work before her murder at Treblinka.