The doctor Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (francized Louis-Lazare Zamenhof , December 15th 1859 - April 14th 1917) is a doctor ophtalmologist Polish. Born in a family from Jewish confession, the language of use is the Yiddish, the Russian but also the Polish (see biography: A. Zakrzewski, E. Wiesenfeld). It is known to have established the bases of the built Langue Esperanto, still used nowadays. The name of this language comes from its pseudonym, Doctor Esperanto .

Biography

The child

Divided between the Austria, the Prussia and the Russia, the Poland does not exist any more at the time when is born, with Białystok, the December 15th 1859, Ludwik Lejzer (Louis Lazare) Zamenhof. Today chief town of Voïvodie located in Eastern Poland, near the Russian border, its birthplace is then inhabited by Poles, Germans, Russians and Jews.

With such a diversity of nationalities, religions, languages and manners, Białystok is the permanent theater of tensions and serious incidents. Louis-Lazare comes from there as of his childhood to wonder about the means of éradiquer the religion and nationality, racial prejudices.

Wire of Markus, professor of German and French, author of very famous of languages and geography, rigorous handbooks, very attached to the culture of the knowledge, and Rozalia (Liba), a sensitive and deeply human mother, the Zamenhof young person impassions himself quickly for the languages. Brilliance raises, it realizes that well within each community that it côtoie are people with whom any problem can find a solution honourable.

It feels that impossibility of communicating cheek a great role in this situation. A linguistic footbridge, at least between these people-there, would open the way with constructive relations. Idea altogether full with good sense if it is considered that people yesterday enemy “final” came from there to cooperate, and to even draw up bonds of friendship as from the moment when a new frame of mind could be established.

The first project of an international language

Whereas he likes the Russian language, Louis-Lazare however sees this frame of mind, on a world scale, through a language belonging to no country dominating, without bond with some nation that it is. He thus harnesses himself without delaying with the task. He is only 19 years old when he presents a project of baptized language “Lingwe Uniwersala” to his comrades of college. But youthful enthusiasm is not what there is of more durable.

It is found quickly only, and the circumstances somewhat will disturb its projects. His/her father sends it to study medicine with the Université of Moscow. Hostile with activities which he considers chimerical and fearing that documents which can seem to be quantified do not attract troubles with his/her son, he makes him promise not to deal with that lasting his studies, and keeps the notes and manuscripts under key.

The student

With Moscow, the studies of medicine do not prevent Louis Lazare from always being interested in the languages. At twenty years it writes a grammar of Yiddish which will never be published. It holds despite everything its promise as for the project which is due to him however in heart.

From its origins, the Jewish question worries it too. It takes part in activities aiming at establishing a colony, even a country, where the Jewish people could live his own life. It will realize, after its return to Warsaw, contradiction between such a project and its aspirations to link the people, more especially as certain excessive behaviors will worry it. It will decide thereafter to be put above all at the service of very whole humanity, conscious that it is only as it will serve best its people and will restore its dignity to him.

After two years of studies, it returns to Warsaw with the certainty that his/her father, scrupulous man, preserved his manuscripts in sure place, with the idea that it will be able to finally resume his work on the language. His/her mother with the painful task to state to him that his/her father destroyed all. The bitterness and rancour quickly yield the place to the determination. At all events, Louis Lazare feels from now on free. He goes back to the work. Its memory enables him to reconstitute the essence of its language. It makes modifications, improvements to him. It analyzed the operation of the agglutinant languages such as Finnish, the Estonian, Hungarian and Turkish, and of the insulating languages such as Mongolian and Chinese. One knows that it carried out his observations of linguistics compared at the time of its studies of medicine with Moscow, this thanks to the direct contacts which it had with students come from all the linguistic areas of the vast Russian empire.

The doctor

Louis Lazare finishes his studies with Warsaw then settles as general practitioner. Its first steps in the professional life are particularly painful. He follows his occupation in underprivileged mediums.

The physical and moral pain of its patients upsets it so much so that it cannot hold any more. It decides to specialize in ophthalmology. The practice of this speciality, always in very poor districts with Kherson, close to the Black Sea, Grodno, in Lithuania, then in Warsaw, enables him to live rather badly that well. It sometimes happens to him to give up making pay its consultations and its care. The day, it looks after. The night, he works on the new language.

1887: year of the chance

July 26th 1887, afterwards many obstacles among which the censure and the financial obstacles, solved thanks to his/her future father-in-law, Louis Lazare finally manage to publish a first Russian handbook under the title “Language International”. It adopts the pseudonym “Doktoro Esperanto”. “Esperanto” designates somebody who hopes. The International Language will be popularized later under this name.

It Marie on August 9th 1887 with Klara Silbernik. Enthusiastic partner, enjouée, devoted, collaborator effective, it married the man very as much as the idea. And the father-in-law, Alexandre Silbernik, will be always there when occur of the difficulties, sharing the ideal of his/her son-in-law and the enthusiasm of his daughter.

The doctor works always intensively, in spite of many tests. He writes in prose and worms. He translates much, so that the International Langue is tested, ground, that it does not have anything to envy the others in the fields of the expression, the precision, esthetics. Favorable opinions appear little by little: American Philosophical Society in 1889, max Müller, one of the most eminent linguists of the time, and Leon Tolstoï in 1894. In 1889 appears the first list of thousand addresses; there will be 5.567 in 1900 of them, 13.103 in 1905.

The censure of the mode tsarist did not arrive, in 1895, to prevent the rise of the language which already crossed the borders of the Russian Empire and which will gain the other continents with the beginning of the year 1900. Companies of Esperanto are based: 44 in 1902, 308 in 1905…

1905: first congress

Boulogne-sur-Mer accommodates the first universal Congrès of Esperanto with 688 participants of 20 countries. Proof is made that Esperanto used hitherto primarily in writing, functions perfectly. The congresses will be followed thus each year: 1906 in Geneva, then Cambridge, Dresden, Barcelona, Washington, Antwerp, Cracow (one of most important), Bern. All is ready, on August 2nd 1914, to accommodate 3.739 congressmen of 50 countries in Paris.

The congress will not take place. The First World War has just burst, and Zamenhof will not see the end of it.

Its talents

Zamenhof controlled the Russian , the Polish, the German , the Hebrew and the Yiddish. He knew well the Latin , the old Greek , the English and the French, rather well the Italian , and was informed also some of Araméen. He moreover had studied the Volapük, the project of Johann Martin Schleyer which failed after one short period of success. One sufficiently long period however (1879 - 1889) not to discredit the idea of international language built.

Contrary to others, Zamenhof did not behave as an author. It had given up its rights and, in 1912, at the time of the congress of Cracow, it had declared that it would be never again in front of the congressmen, but among them. It had understood that a language could not be the business of only one man, nor even of a committee of linguists. That which he proposed in the world was to be able to live its own life, without depending on its initiator.

Of 1912 to its death, it stuck especially to translations and also to the realization for the religions of what it had done for the languages: to extract the best of them to make some perceive the spirit rather than the letter.

It is only in 1984 that one discovered, in Germany, that Dr. L.L. Zamenhof had obtained a patent for a typewriter. For lack of money to put it on the market, it did not benefit from it. Other men had the same idea and exploited it.

Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof is buried with the Jewish cemetery of Warsaw.

Man initially

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