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XVI. The First World War 

A few weeks after this journalistic declaration of war against the Jews, another war 

was declared: the First World War. On his way to the Universal Congress in Paris with 

his wife, Zamenhof was stopped in Germany and, as citizens of Russia, an enemy state, 

the Zamenhofs had to spend two weeks making a roundabout trip through Scandinavia 

and Petersburg in order to return to Warsaw. The Paris Congress never took place. 

Because of the war, the neutrally human religion congress was also postponed, 

although, on the 9

th

 of September, 1914, Zamenhof approached the Swiss Esperantist 

and freemason Friedrich Uhlmann with the suggestion that he organize a congress in 

Switzerland in 1915 and invite participation not only from Esperantists, but from every 

person who aspired to the unification of humanity. Uhlmann advised him to get in touch 

with René de Saussure. Consequently, on the 18

th

 of October, Zamenhof sent Saussure 

his plan for the Congress on Neutrally Human Religion, whose goal was to establish a 

set of new religious principles for all people who had lost their traditional religious faith 

yet still yearned to belong to some religious community, and to found a community for 

such people. 

In late 1914, Zamenhof composed his call to diplomats, Post la granda milito (After 

the Great War) and sent it to several Esperantist publications for them to publish in 

Esperanto and in national languages. He foresaw that the diplomats would reshape the 

map of Europe after the war and he proposed the creation of a United States of Europe. 

Realizing, however, that this proposal could not become reality, he asked the diplomats 

to at least proclaim and guarantee in every sovereign European state the principle that 

“Every country belongs, both morally and materially and with full rights, to all its 

children”. Finally, he recommended that the future peace conference institute the 

following laws: 

1.

 

Each sovereign state shall belong morally and materially to all its natural and 

naturalized inhabitants regardless of their language, religion or supposed 

origin. No ethnic group in the state shall have greater or lesser rights than the 

other groups. 

2.

 

All citizens shall have the full right to use whatever language or dialect and to 

practise whatever religion they please. Whichever language is accepted by 

common consent of the citizens to be the state's official language shall be used 

only in public institutions that are not designed to serve one particular ethnic 

group. 

3.

 

For all injustices committed in a given state, the government of that state shall 

be answerable to a Permanent Pan-European Tribunal created by mutual 

agreement of all European states. 

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48 

 

4.

 

Every sovereign state and every province shall bear, not the name of some 

ethnic group, but a neutrally geographic name adopted by common consent of 

all states.(Mi estas Homo 232) 

Once his call to diplomats was completed, Zamenhof worked on a project to “revise 

Esperanto once and for all”, because there were still unsuitable elements in the language 

that he had not noticed when he had been developing it prior to its publication. He felt 

that the 28-year practical functioning of the language was sufficient to reveal any 

problems with the language and that “problems that [had] not been found in the 

language by now will never be found in it”. 

Zamenhof was afraid that, if the Esperantists themselves did not now revise the 

whole language, future governments, after adopting Esperanto, would commission 

revision, not by Esperantists, but by scientists who would possibly not have the 

necessary competence. Zamenhof's last words addressed to the whole Esperanto 

community expressed this view: 

We must, then, find a solution to the unhappy question that constantly 

hangs over our language like the sword of Damocles. We must, once and 

for all, very attentively and in detail, revise our entire language. (Esperanto 

203) 

The war turned Zamenhof's life upside down. On the 22

nd

 of November, he suffered 

a heart attack. Following his recovery, he shared his professional work with his son 

Adam, who saw patients in the morning, while his father saw them for two hours in the 

afternoon. From then on, Zamenhof could devote himself to Esperanto in the morning 

and no longer had to work in the evenings. In March 1915 he completed his translation 

of the Old Testament and began to translate Andersen's fairy tales (from German). 

The Zamenhofs moved from their home in Dzika Street in July 1915 and took up 

residence in a street with a more suitable name: Królewska (Royal Street). The rest of 

Zamehof's life was spent in this comfortable, seven-room apartment on the third floor of 

the attractive house at number 141, in the best district in Warsaw, close to the central city 

park. His son Adam took over his practice in Dzika Street. Zamenhof did not agree to 

stop working entirely, but he was allowed only very few patients. 

A few days after the Zamenhofs' move, the Russian army withdrew from Warsaw 

and the city was occupied by the Germans. The atmosphere of war continually saddened 

Zamenhof, who had devoted his life to the peaceful reunification of humanity. Many 

Esperantists were dying on the battle fields. Particularly upsetting for Zamenhof was the 

death on 18

th

 July, 1916 of his youngest brother, Alexander, the most ardent Zionist in 

the family. He worried about his daughter Sophia, who had begun working for her uncle, 

Constantine Zilbernik, in the Kharkov administrative district and, after the Russian 

army's withdrawal, was unable to return to Warsaw, which was now under German 

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49 

 

occupation. 

Esperantist activity withered during the war. Esperantists visited Królewska Street 

only on rare occasions. Among the visitors were Leo Belmont, Odo Bujwid, Edward 

Wiesenfeld and the German Esperantist, major Paul Neubarth, the port commandant in 

Warsaw. Beginning in August 1916, Antoni Grabowski regularly visited Zamenhof to 

read fragments of his translation of Adam Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz. 

Zamenhof never stopped working on his homaranism project and, two months 

before his death, he sent the final version to the German lawyer Ludwig Schiff. He asked 

Schiff to translate it into German and send it on to de Saussure so that the latter could 

add the French translation, have the text printed and distribute it to the world's most 

important periodicals. 

Like the previous ones, this version consisted of a foreword and a declaration. The 

foreword distinguished clearly between Esperantism and homaranism and outlined a 

completely new definition of the doctrine: 

Under the name “Homaranism” I mean a striving towards “a brotherhood 

of humanity”, towards the eradication of interracial hatred and injustice and 

towards a way of life that, little by little, could lead, not in theory, but in 

practice, to a spiritual union of all human beings. (Mi estas Homo, 235) 

It is noteworthy that Zamenhof no longer envisions the idea that “humans will some day 

merge into a single neutrally human people”, as he did in the first version of