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VI. Esperanto Spreads 

La Esperantisto’s publisher was the president of the Nuremberg Mondlingva Klubo 

(International Language Club), Christian Schmidt, and its editor was Dr. Esperanto (Dr. L. 

L. Zamenhof). 

The first issue contained eight pages and was printed in newspaper format (35 x 26 

cm). It opened with a Prospectus in French, German and Esperanto. Each of the remaining 

texts was printed in parallel German and Esperanto versions. The first part of Zamenhof's 

essay Esperanto and Volapük filled four of the eight pages. 

Despite the Prospectus's announcement that the paper would appear on the first of 

every month, only three issues of La Esperantisto were published in 1889, each of which 

contained parallel German and Esperanto texts. The following year saw only a further nine 

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issues numbered consecutively to the first three to make a full year’s volume. The texts in 

these nine issues were only in Esperanto with supplementary pages on grammar in 

German. The paper was a hopeless case financially, since the number of subscribers, 

mostly from Russia, never exceeded three hundred. 

In the third issue's lead article, Zamenhof proposed the creation of a worldwide league 

that would be “the exclusive and absolute authority in our [language] cause”. Even though 

only two people had publicly expressed their opinion of the proposal – both negative – 

Zamenhof declared in issue number 6, published the 25

th

 of March, 1890, “The 

International League of Esperantists exists!” 

Beginning with the 10

th

 issue, Zamenhof became La Esperantisto's sole editor, 

although the paper continued to be published in Nuremberg. Schmidt's role was reduced to 

that of representing the paper before the government of Bavaria. Meanwhile, opinions 

about Zamenhof's proposed League of Esperantists continued to arrive and were 

exclusively negative. Finally, in the last issue of 1890, number 12, Zamenhof called the 

League “a stillborn child” and concluded that it did not exist. 

The international league was a failure, but Esperantists founded associations in several 

cities, mostly in Germany, Russia and Sweden. The Petersburg association, Espero (Hope) 

was especially important and Zamenhof devoted considerable space to it in La 

Esperantisto. Indeed, Petersburg provided the greatest number of subscribers to Esperanto's 

first periodical, a number that reached eighty-seven in 1893. 

Subscriptions to the paper stagnated in 1891. In August and September, Zamenhof 

proposed converting La Esperantisto to a limited company and issuing founding member 

cards, but these proposals aroused little interest. He intended to abandon the publication, 

but it was saved from financial disaster by the German land surveyor Wilhelm Heinrich 

Trompeter. Trompeter assumed the cost of publication and also paid Zamenhof a monthly 

salary of a hundred German marks. This was equivalent to the salary of a semi-skilled 

worker or a beginning low-level bureaucrat in Russia (fifty roubles). Zamenhof kept his 

position as editor and Trompeter became the publisher, while Schmidt continued to fulfill 

his role in Bavaria. 

The periodical doubled in size to sixteen pages and, at the same time, became more 

interesting as the financial burden was lifted from Zamenhof's shoulders. He planned the 

issues, edited them, corresponded with authors, proofed each text for linguistic correctness, 

prepared the lists of Esperantists’ names and addresses, which were temporarily published 

in La Esperantisto, corresponded with the printer, forwarded subscriptions to Nuremberg, 

and looked after a multitude of other routine editorial matters. 

The most important thing, though, was that he himself wrote most of the texts. The 

texts of the first issues were almost exclusively Zamenhof's, appearing under his own 

name, under pseudonyms and anonymously. He wrote the first obituary in Esperanto, 

which was also Esperanto's first hagiographic text. He was responsible for the first 

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recommendations for the promotion of Esperanto. His translations of Andersen's The Little