German Esperantists were especially attacked by those newspapers that saw themselves as guardians of 'true' patriotism. The substance of these attacks showed three primary traits. First, they began with a pseudo- scientific biological approach to language. For example, the chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who maintained that language was no more than a technical mode of communication and that national languages were too imperfect to serve the needs of international scientific exchange, was reproached by reference to the highly developed and richly nuanced German language and its unique spirit.[109] This attitude can also be assigned to the category of popular prejudices against artificial, unnatural lan- guages. Even the cry that Esperanto would be 'culturally destructive'9 if introduced into schools was a hardly surprising reaction among the German middle class, which clung to its sentimental devotion to German culture through this period of rapid social change.
Secondly, and indicative of downright hysteria, was the designation of Esperanto by a German newspaper, only a little over 20 years after the arrival of the language in the world, as 'an instrument for the eradication of the German language'.[110] Ostwald was severely admonished for campaigning for Esperanto in the USA instead of dedicating himself to the dissemination of the German language.[111] And, finally, a quarterly review in 1912 sounded a battle cry 'against Esperantism, that excrescence of exalted internationalism'.[112]These three principal forms of criticism—that Esperanto was not a real language; that it threatened the German language; that behind it lay the clandestine forces of internationalism—are compressed into a single short passage in the Berlin Deutsche Tageszeitung in 1907:
Even natural scientists lack the sense that our mother language is a distinct and natural growth; this renders understandable the incredible barbarity of Herr chemist-professor Ostwald, who is capable of enthusing over such a laughable fraud as the language Esperanto—something thought up by a half-caste and driven by hatred against the German language.[113]
This obsession with feelings of inferiority directed against the older world powers, the British and the French, was manifested by the nationalist press in, for example, the assertion that Germans were particularly vulnerable to the dangers of Esperanto because they did not possess the same national pride displayed by other peoples. 1 4 One magazine explained that other nations, when speaking Esperanto, maintain their esteem for their own language, but this was not so for Germans because they were always so easily impressed by anything foreign.[114] Esperanto was feared as a cunning instrument to oppress the Germans—as a great international danger possibly capable of reducing the German language to the level of a mere insignificant dialect.[115]
If the German Esperantists replied that Esperanto was a neutral means of communication offering no special privileges to any nation, the argu- ment had no effect, because the nationalists sought increased privileges for the German language, in line with the rising global status of German commerce and industry. So there was no way to expect understanding from that quarter for the idea of dismantling language discrimination through Esperanto. On the contrary, they demanded that the smaller states deal with the great powers in the languages of the great powers rather than their own less influential languages—and certainly not in Esperanto. The smaller nations grew enthusiastic about Esperanto because its victory would bring them equal bargaining rights with the representatives of the major languages of world trade—and for the Germans that would be 'economic suicide'.[116]
The more the language spread, the more it became evident that the antipathy of its opponents related less to Esperanto's structural weaknesses as a language than to its political and ideological agenda. An explicit dis- tinction was made between the creative achievement of Zamenhof, whose technical quality was not contested, and the goals of the Esperantists, which had to be fought against at all costs. Such a distinction, for exam- ple, was made by Albert Zimmermann, a member of the board of the influential German National Union of Commercial Employees, who began a multi-year campaign against Esperanto with a book published in 1915 that saw the language primarily as an obstacle to German com- mercial expansion across the world.[117]
Calling Esperanto the most dangerous to date of all projects for a 'global language' and considering it an idea in itself unhealthy and profoundly anti-nationalist, Zimmermann confesses that he 'assumes that Esperanto is as perfect as one has a right to expect', and that he is opposed only to Zamenhof's goal, which in his opinion merits as much condemnation as the efforts of 'latinizers', pacifists and campaigners for the emancipation of women.[118] Zimmermann bases his judgment of Esperanto exclusively on its usefulness or lack of usefulness to the German nation.
This 'great power' attitude among opponents of Esperanto was accom- panied even before the First World War by an element of anti-Semitism. Early in 1913, the pan-German Staatsbŭrger-Zeitung named 'all such efforts to invent a new international language [_] a madness and a crime against humanity, an intellectual chimera'; the newspaper maintained that Esperanto, as the work of a Jew, was not suitable for Christian Germans. It went on to refer to the language as 'this Jewish world language'.[119] Such attacks on Esperanto nonetheless remained limited to the pages of spe- cific newspapers and did not lead to official actions by the authorities against the Esperanto movement. They could also not prevent the orga- nized Esperantists from reaching an estimated 8000 in the year 1914.[120]
On the other hand, the adepts of Esperanto in Germany were obliged—far more than those of France—to take care to eliminate from their promotional efforts anything that might raise the suspicions of the nationalist press^2 This requirement explains their frequent protesta- tions that Esperanto was not directed against German interests, or that it was not Esperanto but the learning of foreign languages that threatened German identity.[121] A few German Esperantists protested at the implied antipathy to other nations manifested in these attacks, describing them- selves as people who found rational and not especially enthusiastic inter- nationalism fully reconcilable with love of the fatherland.^[122] But others maintained a curious neutrality, asserting that 'pacifists, chauvinists or socialists' should be equally welcome in the movement.^[123] Some even bowed to this nationalist fever, distancing themselves from those who used Esperanto for 'anti-German' goals.[124] The journal Germana Esperantisto in 1913 declared the Universal Esperanto Association on 'the wrong track' because it was concerned with politics—more precisely because its vice president called on Esperantists to take action against the lies and mis- representations about Esperanto in the chauvinist press in various coun- tries.[125] Such criticism of UEA not only illustrates the obstacles facing the German Esperantists in their work in Germany but also shows the degree to which the efforts of Hector Hodler and the other UEA leaders collided with the realities of a world on the brink of war.