While I was hiking in the forest near Sopot, I ran into a memorial stone of the 19th World Esperanto Congress that took place in the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk) in August 1927. There was also an information panel in both Polish and Esperanto explaining the context of the memorial stone and the congress.

It was interesting for me to find out that this congress had taken place in Gdansk and that German soldiers had destroyed the monument during WWII, but you might be wondering what Esperanto actually is, why people were meeting to discuss it and why the Nazis would destroy this monument?

Esperanto is a language that was created by the Jewish/Polish doctor L. L. Zamenhof (1859-1917) based on existing Indo-European languages. His goal was to create a second language for the whole world that would be neutral and fair and lead to equal communication between everyone. He hoped that his language would create a world without war as everyone would be able to understand each other. The word 'Esperanto' in Esperanto literally means 'one who hopes'. You can understand that the Nazis were not fond of this idealistic peace loving idea.

Esperanto became the most successful

constructed language worldwide and had quite a large community of speakers in the turbulent 20th century full of wars and conflict. Esperanto did offer people hope.

Nowadays there are still around 2 million speakers of Esperanto of whom a couple of thousand consider it their native tongue. You can also learn the language on Duolingo, translate it on Google translate and read Wikipedia articles in Esperanto.

Esperanto did not achieve its goal of becoming the second language (the lingua franca) of the world, but English has certainly assumed this role and will continue to expand its importance as a global language. Let's hope that this will also lead to the 'world without war' that Zamenhof dreamed of.

Unu hako kverkon ne faligas. (Esperanto Proverb) 

Originally posted on Instagram on October 2, 2022