Nazi Esperantists
Around the autumn of 1933, a group of individuals hitherto largely unknown to the German Esperanto movement began to rise to promi- nence. For these people, GEA's submission to the authorities was still insufficient. As early as 9 February 1931, the young SA squad leader Herbert Wohlfahrt had founded the so-called Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Esperanto-Bund, an organization that from the start made itself available for Nazi propaganda by way of Esperanto. However, the party refused the Association the use of the epithet 'National Socialist', with the result that it changed its name to 'Neue Deutsche Esperanto- Bewegung' (NDEB). In October this group launched a divisive cam- paign against the 'eternaj hiera^uloj ('eternal yesterpeople') in GEA, with the aim of attracting GEA members to their cause.[339] NDEB's constitu- tion required, among other things, that all Esperanto organizations in Germany 'who tolerate and accept as members Jews, pacifists and prof- iteers' should be resisted 'by all interested authorities' until 'this anti- German attitude ceases or they are forced to dissolve'.[340]
At first, chiefly because of the prestige of Behrendt, the subversions of NDEB had only limited success. Realizing that even the Nazi GEA members were disinclined to support it, NDEB relaxed its earlier con- dition that only party members could join and from then on accepted sympathizers as well. GEA resisted NDEB's attacks, asserting that essen- tially the aims of the two organizations were identical, only excepting the ambitions of the NDEB leadership and the Jewish problem. GEA refused to expel its Jewish members (if they were 'honest people'), because GEA had not yet received an order to apply the 'Aryan paragraph'.[341]
In April 1934, however, the conflict entered a critical stage. Sixteen local groups in Saxony threatened to resign if the leadership of GEA did not resign and if the Aryan paragraph was not applied.[342] In reply, Behrendt underlined the fact that there was no legal hindrance to the existence of Jewish representatives (delegitoj) of UEA in Germany[343] and promptly expelled the person principally responsible for the ultima- tum, the leader of the Saxon League, Albrecht Naumann.[344] Naumann, a teacher in a technical school and for many years head of the GEAs press office, had earlier, in Cologne, proposed Behrendt as leader of the
Association. His present effort to remove Behrendt found little support among the GEA membership. Of the 1048 members who expressed an opinion, only 22 argued for the immediate introduction of the Aryan paragraph,[345] and in May, during the Whitsuntide annual general meeting of GEA in Wurzburg, Behrendt was unanimously re-elected as leader.
But in the course of the annual meeting a further ultimatum arrived. NDEB demanded that the two associations merge in a new 'German Esperanto Front' whose leader would be Naumann; if GEA did not yield, NDEB announced that it would 'launch, in the most severe and uncompromising manner, a fanatical battle against the present personali- ties, reactionaries who obstinately seek to resist the creation of a patriotic spirit within the German Esperanto community'.[346] The annual meeting greeted the reading of NDEB's letter with cries of 'Shame!' and derision, but the recently re-elected Behrendt, wounded by the letter's naming him a 'reactionary', announced that he was stepping down and resigned. As the new leader he proposed the engineer Kurt Walther, from Dresden, a member of the party who had joined GEA only at the end of 1931.
Assuming office, Walther not only paid homage to his predecessor but also bowed to Naumann. Two weeks later, on 3 June, Walther (for GEA) and Willibald Pietsch (for NDEB) signed an agreement for the merger of the two organizations in a working relationship whose goal was the creation of a German Esperanto Front.[347] In July, Walther ordered every GEA member to complete a survey that required, among other things, an answer to the question of whether he or she was of Jewish ancestry. [348]
Because GEA had adapted itself to NDEB's line, for a while it seemed that the quarrel was in fact at an end. But peace did not last long, because Friedrich Ellersiek, publisher of GEA's journal, categorically refused to accept contribu- tions from NDEB. When, in addition, a Berlin group contested the validity of the decisions taken in Wurzburg—in fact, Behrendt, in the general confusion, had not followed the correct procedure for invitations to the annual general meeting—NDEB again broke off relations with GEA and, as of September 1934, began publishing its own newsletter.[349] It openly appealed to members of GEA to leave their Association, attacked Ellersiek for publishing advertise- ments for 'anti-German' Esperanto publications, and demanded that the lan- guage be used in the service of the Fatherland 'on an unconditionally National Socialist basis'. Although barely a month passed before GEA submitted to the Nazi regime, NDEB considered the delay to be pure opportunism.[350]
In an effort to avoid giving NDEB fodder for further attacks, Walther tried to erase the most recent differences between GEA and NDEB. He assured Pietsch, the leader of NDEB, that with his consent nothing had occurred in GEA that was not in accordance with his National Socialist principles.[351] On 6 January 1935, an extraordinary annual meeting of GEA took place in Dresden, at which a new constitution was accepted and the goal of the Association was defined, next to the dissemination of Esperanto, as 'utilization [of the language] in a National Socialist sense'.[352]Now definitively elected as leader, Walther asked for the cooperation of his members 'to spread our National Socialist worldview in all countries of the world through Esperanto'.[353] And, finally, to 'satisfy in every way the requirements of the times', in September 1935 Walther communicated the message that 'only German compatriots can be members ofGEA'[354]—an action that meant that Jews would have to resign from the Association.
The once neutral and globally respected GEA had expelled from its ranks in the name of 'love of country' members of the same ethnicity as Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, who addressed the forerunners of fascism in his day with the following words: 'You who sow the dark seeds of conflict, talk if you will about your hatred of everything that is not yours, talk about egotism, but never use the word "love"—because in your mouths that sacred word "love" is defiled.'[355]
4
'An Ally of World Jewry#
The Road to Prohibition
We have described the steps by which the politically neutral GEA degenerated into an association overtly dedicated to Nazi ideol- ogy. We can now turn to, among other sources, the papers of the State Secret Police. These papers, preserved in the German Federal Archive in Berlin-Lichterfelde, will help us to reconstruct the tac- tics employed by the regime in its anti-Esperanto policy and also to discover how it reacted to attempts to create a kind of symbiosis between Esperanto and National Socialism.
The first major official blow to the German Esperanto movement, after the destruction of the workers' associations, was delivered by a decree of the Reich Minister of Science and Education, Bernhard Rust, on 17 May 1935:
The cultivation of artificial world auxiliary languages such as Esperanto has no place in the National Socialist state. Their use leads to a weakening of the essential values of the national heritage. Thus we should avoid all
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