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III. Zamenhof's Education 

The young Zamenhof was thus exposed, through his family, to intellectual and 

cultural ideas beyond the strict realm of traditional Judaism. His education also took 

place in the broader world of the reigning culture. In 1870, he began studies in the 

Bialystock Gymnasium, where he remained a student until late 1873, when his father 

moved the family to Warsaw to take up a teaching position at the Warsaw Veterinary 

School and the Real School (a type of Gymnasium).

6

 Mark Zamenhof was one of only 

three Jews teaching in Warsaw's secondary schools at that time; he later went on to teach 

at the Women’s Gymnasium and the First Men’s Pro-Gymnasium (a junior school). As 

the son of a secondary-school teacher, Ludovic received free tuition. In Warsaw, he 

enrolled in the Second Men's Gymnasium, but was not able to begin his studies 

immediately. He studied at home for several months in order to learn Latin and Greek, 

which had not been taught at the Bialystock Gymnasium, but were required for the 

Warsaw school. He did not return to school until August of 1874. 

Ludovic did not spend all his time studying, however. From his earliest childhood, 

he had reflected on the situation of the Jews, on the relations between peoples and on the 

possibility of an inter-ethnic language. His father was not at all happy about his son's 

interest in an international language. Ludovic's brother Lev once wrote that their father 

“spoke about his son's work to the director of a Warsaw Gymnasium who told him that 

his son was lost forever, that his work was the surest symptom of the onset of an 

incurable madness.”(Ludovikologiaj biografietoj 30) Mark Zamenhof made his son 

promise not to publish his language project until he had finished his university studies, 

which he began in August of 1879 in the Faculty of Medicine at the Imperial Moscow 

University. 

At the same time as Ludovic Zamenhof, Anton Chekhov, the future short-story 

writer and dramatist, was also a medical student at the Moscow University. He and 

Zamenhof had little contact outside of their classes, however, because friendships 

between Jewish and Christian students were rare at that time. 

Despite the fact that Jews comprised only 4% of the population of Russia in the late 

19

th

 centurey, they made up 12.2% of Gymnasium students and 8.8% of university 

students. In particular, many Jews studied medicine and law. It was among these 

students that Zamenhof found friends. 

While at Moscow university, Zamenhof wrote the first analysis of Yiddish grammar, 

Provo de gramatiko de novjuda lingvo (Attempt at a Grammar of a New Jewish 

Language). Written originally in Russian under the pseudonym L. Gamzefon, this study 

was unpublished for 100 years. The work was finally translated into Esperanto and 

published by the Fondumo Esperanto (Esperanto Foundation) in a parallel Russian–

Esperanto edition in 1982. 

On the 1

st

 of March, 1881, the terrorist organization Narodnaja Volja (The People's 

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6 

 

Will) assassinated Czar Alexander II. The situation in Russia quickly became unstable. 

In several Ukrainian cities pogroms were perpetrated against the Jews. The ideology of 

Narodnaja Volja backed the pogroms as a form of revolutionary conflict. Although only 

a few Jews were killed – several dozen of the rioters were killed by the police and army 

– the pogroms worried the new Jewish intelligentsia, who realized that the integration of 

Jews into Russian society was a failure. 

Because of this unstable situation, Zamenhof returned to Warsaw at the end of his 

second year of studies and enrolled for his third year at Warsaw University in August 

1881. Three years later, he received his medical degree and began searching for a 

suitable place to set up his practice. 

In February 1885, doctor Zamenhof moved to the town of Wiejsieje in the Suwałki 

administrative district (now in north-eastern Poland), where his married sister lived, and 

began to practice there. After four months, however, he decided that he was ill-suited to 

general practice. Consequently, the young doctor returned to Warsaw and selected 

ophthalmology as his specialization. For six months he interned in the ophthalmology 

department of the Warsaw Jewish hospital. In late 1885, he moved to the district capital, 

Płock (or Plotzk), and began to practise as an ophthalmologist. It quickly became 

evident to him, however, that his specialized knowledge was insufficient and, in May 

1886, he went to Vienna to begin advanced study at the ophthalmology clinic of the 

Vienna General Hospital. On completion of his studies there, he returned to Warsaw, 

where the Zamenhof family had moved to number 40 Muranowska Street. It was at this 

address that he opened his medical office. 

In the meantime, Lucovic had made the acquaintance of Clara Zilbernik, the 

youngest daughter of Sender Lejbovitch Zilbernik, a soap manufacturer and an 

upstanding member of the Jewish community. On the 18

th

 of March, 1887, Zamenhof 

and Clara's engagement was announced. The young couple was married on the 9

th

 of 

August in Warsaw and set up house at number 19 Przejazd Street in Warsaw. 

Clara's dowry of ten thousand roubles was enough for the young family to live on 

for several years, during which time Zamenhof was expected to make his medical 

practice profitable. However, with his father-in-law's consent, Zamenhof invested half 

the dowry in the publication and promotion of his International Language.