Thus, the Ministry recommended that Esperanto Associations led by party members should not be hit with official prohibition; instead, 'with a certain amount of pressure easily achievable' it would be better to work for their voluntary dissolution.[369]
On 21 January 1936, Heydrich communicated the Ministry of Propaganda's opinion to Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer. In his letter he repeated that in the past year the Esperanto movement had been notably active: in Munster 44 members of a Communist group had been arrested, and in Bottrop the local GEA club had been dissolved for the distribu- tion of leaflets by former GLEA members. Heydrich wrote that originally he intended to dissolve all Esperanto organizations, but he now asked Hess that a party order be promulgated prohibiting party members from belonging to these organizations. At the same time he asked Goebbels' ministry 'to issue propaganda in a suitable form' against GEA.[370]
Indeed, as of the end of 1935 an anti-Esperanto campaign was clearly visible in the Nazi press. Its sharpness far exceeded the tone of earlier attacks. In November, Der Weltkampf, a journal founded by the principal Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and fully dedicated to the battle against Jews, named Esperanto 'an ally of world Jewry'. [371] The article was written by Theodor Koch, an elementary school teacher in Bremen who knew enough Esperanto to supply the Gestapo, regularly as of April 1935, with information on the movement. We will return to him.
Also relevant to the situation in November 1935 was an internal report by the Gestapo branch in Potsdam: 'it seems extraordinarily odd that in Germany the publication of journals in Esperanto, that deceitful Jewish language, is still allowed, as is the case in Cologne'.1 8 The report was referring to Heroldo, which at the time was preparing to move to the Netherlands. At the beginning of 1936 the attacks became so frequent and intense that they could only give the impression that coordinated activity aimed at systematically preparing for the liquidation of the move- ment was proceeding. The newspapers gave their principal attention to the use of the language in a National Socialist sense, which they condemned without reservation. Under the title 'Information under the Soviet Star' the journal of the Nazi student union wrote that it was amazed by the fact that 'the German Esperanto Association is naive enough to believe that through the use ofits internationalist artificial language it can campaign fOr a nationalist idea such as National Socialism to workers in foreign countries influenced byJewish-Marxist beliefs'.[372] Thus, it was from the Nazi side that GEA had to learn of its naivety in failing to understand that Nazism and Esperanto were irreconcilable.
At the end of 1935 GEA's journal ceased to appear. Its publisher Friedrich Ellersiek gave up on it partly because of financial difficulties and partly because of the attacks of NDEB against its 'un-German attitude'. In the final issue Kurt Walther still optimistically quoted a communication from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: 'Every German can, if he wishes, learn Esperanto!',[373] but midway in the preparations for the 25th German Esperanto Congress in Weimar, came the decree demanded by Heydrich. Signed by Martin Bormann, chief of staff in the office of the Deputy Fuhrer, and dated 18 February 1936, it declared:
Because the creation of an international mixed language runs counter to the basic concepts of National Socialism and ultimately can respond only to the interests of supranational powers, the Deputy Fuhrer hereby forbids all party members and members of organizations affiliated with the party from membership in all forms of artificial-language organizations.[374]
Because NDEB was led by party members and probably a large number of its likely 500 members also belonged to the party, its existence was essentially ended by this decree. GEA also faced the question of whether it should continue its activity or dissolve itself, because Bormann's decree meant that not only Walther but also many of its members would have to resign. At the end of May 1936 the Congress in Weimar took place as planned; a publicity leaflet on Esperanto produced on that occasion lacked all mention of the origins of the language and its authorship by Zamenhof.[375] The participants unanimously decided to continue their activities, approved a new constitution (the fourth in three years) and elected the Dresden businessman Fritz Thieme as their new leader.[376]
But the new leadership scarcely had time to draw breath before the regime abandoned its last scruples. On 26 April the Gestapo arrested two Dutch Esperantists who were meeting in Dusseldorf with German fellow speakers; after four days of questioning they were escorted to the frontier.2 4 An internal decree of the political police bearing the date of 24 April left to the discretion of local police forces the dis- solution of groups whose members were engaged in activity against the state. The decree indicated that 'for reasons of state politics, a general prohibition of Esperanto organizations is currently not the intention'.[377] According to an internal report of 1940, irregular and illegal activities by members of Esperanto associations continued, so that it was necessary to put an end to the organized movement entirely. The fatal blow came on 20 June. A decree from Heinrich Himmler, who had recently combined the offices of Chief of Police and Leader of the SS, prohibited activity for the international organizations UEA and SAT and required that internal associations, principally GEA,[378]dissolve themselves before 15 July if they wished to avoid compulsory liquidation. After that date all activity for any artificial-language orga- nization was forbidden.[379]
This requirement was communicated by Thieme to the clubs and indi- vidual members in a circular of 4 July.[380] Thirty years and almost two months after its founding, the German Esperanto Association ceased to exist.[381]
Just a Language?
What, then, can we learn from the papers of the secret police? We can surely conclude that GEA was banned because, despite its efforts at adap- tation, it remained infiltrated by elements opposed to the regime.
Clearly, throughout the period of the Third Reich, Esperantists, par- ticularly those in the workers' Esperanto movement, engaged in anti- fascist resistance. The group most active in using Esperanto to organize resistance proved to be the communists.[382] In the first years of the Nazi regime, GLEA members organized underground courses3 1 and distrib- uted information about the situation in Germany among their comrades abroad, sometimes hiding them in advertising leaflets, for example for Nivea Cream.[383] In the reverse direction, translations from the workers' Esperanto press in other countries served as instructional material in ille- gal anti-Nazi cells. In addition, the periodicals published by SAT in the years 1933-35 were full of first-hand reports from German comrades about the Nazi terror; it seems, furthermore, that in general they painted a more realistic picture of the situation[384] than the newsletters produced by the communist PEK.[385] Worker Esperantists maintained contact with one another by means of secret meetings not only in private houses but even in such places as public baths and in forests,[386] and they also undertook to serve as couriers, transporting banned literature from Czechoslovakia to Saxony[387] or from the Netherlands to the Ruhr region;[388] in Hamburg, seamen smuggled anti-Nazi brochures to local Esperantists.[389] Esperanto also helped victims of political persecution flee abroad. Many worker Esperantists nevertheless fell victim to the regime. Some of them lan- guished in prisons or concentration camps, in some cases for several years. In the Hohnstein concentration camp Gerhard Schubert, a Social Democrat and a teacher, was tortured to the point of suicide in March 1933,[390] and Theodor Stoterau, founder of the workers' Esperanto club in Bremerhaven, threw himself to his death from the fifth story of the courthouse where he had been sentenced to six years of imprisonment.[391]A highly active communist Esperantist in Frankfurt am Main, Herbert Haupt, arrested in 1933, was shot dead, probably in a cellar.[392]