leader,” 76 Zamenhof rejected the title majstro (master) whenever he
was addressed as such.
Javal, a Jew, attributed Zamenhof’s warm reception to the
committee’s efforts to conceal his Jewishness, especially from the
French press. Of seven hundred articles about the congress, Javal
noted, only one referred to Zamenhof as a Jew: “We needed
admirable discipline to hide your origins from the public,” Javal
wrote. That anti-Semitism lay beneath the committee’s “handling” of
Zamenhof, Javal was in no doubt. But in the great tradition of
Jewish self-deception, Javal ascribed anti-Semitism to the French
public at large, commending the committee for protecting Zamenhof
—and Esperanto.
In the era of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army captain who had
been convicted on trumped-up treason charges, and whose case had
unleashed a wave of French anti-Semitism, Jewishness was at the
very least a liability. But there was more at stake for the Congress
Committee than managing public relations. Just as Dreyfus had
polarized the French populace, his fate had riven the French
leadership of the Esperanto movement. As Marjorie Boulton,
Zamenhof’s biographer, writes, “General Sebert and Javal were pro-
Dreyfus, de Beaufront and Bourlet, anti-Dreyfus.” 77 Neither Javal
nor Zamenhof was willing to confront the fact that the Congress
Committee, rather than deal with its potentially embarrassing
disunity, had preferred to divorce Esperanto from Hillelism and
occlude Zamenhof’s own Jewishness. Even for the pro-Dreyfusards,
saving the good name of Esperanto was a greater cause than
defending Zamenhof’s Jewishness. As Javal wrote to Zamenhof, “On
this point all friends of Esperanto agree, that we must continue to
hide the matter, as long as the great battle is not yet won.” 78 By the
time of Javal’s death, two years later, the “great battle” for
Esperanto—the fina venko—was no closer to triumph. As for the
battle against French anti-Semitism, even thirty years after Javal’s
death, it was far from over: four of Javal’s five children would
perish in the Holocaust.
* * *
During these early years, the governing structure of the Esperanto
movement was decidedly unstable. With French elites dominating
the movement, pressure to accord national movements such as
France and Germany an administrative role increased. During the
run-up to the Boulogne Congress, Zamenhof proposed that the
twenty member countries should be represented proportionally on a
Central Committee, their delegates elected annually from a
collective of local clubs. 79 And the Central Committee, in turn,
would elect its own president. In addition, Zamenhof envisioned a
suite of working groups overseeing administration, congresses,
examinations, and the authorization of manuscripts (the Censor’s
Committee). A Language Committee could recommend changes to
the Central Committee which, if approved, would still require
ratification by the congress.
In July 1905, the Boulogne Congress defeated Zamenhof’s
proposal. In its place, they passed a toothless resolution, authored
by Cart, declaring that “national Esperanto groups [should] strive
for closer relations among them. ”80 Rather than hash out the details
and draw up a constitution—rather than take on the burden of self-
government—the congress simply postponed the matter of
governance to the next congress. As a sop to Zamenhof, he was
licensed to name the members of the Language Committee. Indeed,
he named ninety-eight members, but their prerogatives were
nominal and their number would prove unwieldy. Relations between
national units, local clubs, and individual members remained vague
and unspecified; no mechanisms were in place to facilitate relations
among them or to resolve disputes. Zamenhof had invented the
lingvo internacia with ethnicities, not nation-states, in mind; but
national organizations had become, and would long remain, powers
to be reckoned with.
In lieu of a constitution of bylaws, Zamenhof wrote a seven-point
Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism that, in its final form,
came to be known as the Declaration of Boulogne. Before approving
it, the Congress Committee excised two provisions: one for a central
governing committee, and another which gave Esperantists of the
future permission to abandon Esperanto if a superior auxiliary
language were available for adoption. (And Zamenhof left it to them
—not experts—to judge.) Instead of a framework by which
Esperantists could deliberate over their future, the Declaration of
Boulogne designated an immutable linguistic constitution: the famous
Fundamento, which comprised the rules of grammar and usage in the
inaugural pamphlet of 1887.
There were other, notable changes, all designed to scrape away
the high polish of Zamenhof’s ethical ideals. Whereas the Unua Libro
of 1887 asserted that Esperanto belonged to “society,” the
Declaration of Boulogne now asserted that it was “no one’s
property, neither in material matters nor in moral matters.” If
Esperanto had no “owner,” it would instead have “masters”: “The
spiritual masters of the language shall be … the most talented
writers in this language.” Thus, in place of a Hillelist spirituality, the
declaration enshrined the “spirituality” of aesthetic style.
In its revised form, the document also declared ethical and moral
commitments to have no bearing on Esperantism, which was now
defined as “the endeavor to spread throughout the entire world the
use of this neutral, human language.… All other ideals or hopes tied
with Esperantism by any Esperantist is his or her purely private
affair, for which Esperantism is not responsible.” Esperantism, thus
defined, had no moral motive, no ideology, no rationale; “ideas or
hopes” were relegated to the private realm. In its final form, purged
of any hint of Hillelism—any reference to God, Jews, cadavers, or
conscience—and disabled as a framework for deliberation and
policy making, the document was so innocuous that the Congress
Committee published it even before ratification.
According to a letter Zamenhof sent to Javal soon after the
Boulogne Congress, he had agreed to privatize Esperantic ideals in
the declaration with an ulterior motive. In fact, he disclosed, he
intended to introduce Hillelism at the second Universal Congress in
Geneva (1906) for those Esperantists who were ready, freely and on
their own account, to affirm Hillelism as the “inner idea” of
Esperanto. The emphasis would now be on building an interethnic
monotheistic community, radiating from Esperantists outward.
Ironically, it was a Jewish catastrophe that sharpened his resolve to
broaden the appeal of Hillelism: during the revolutionary year 1905,
in more than six hundred towns in the Pale of Settlement, anti-
Semitic pogroms murdered Jews and ruined their towns, property,
and livelihoods. From these bloody events, from these rent lives, the