M HKA Ensembles

Leaflet, 15.5 x 11.8 cm.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp.

This small booklet published by the Esperanto Propaganda Institute in Leipzig contains the famous speech “Land of Liberty” delivered by Zamenhof at the 6th Esperanto congress in Washington, 1910. With high expectations for the development of the Esperantist movement in the US, Zamenhof addressed the attendants of the conference as citizens of “the land of liberty” and “most powerful representatives of the new world”. However, the main theme of his speech was the unity of the Esperantist community worldwide. Summing up his ideas, he claims that “the international language cannot be other than Esperanto” and any possible changes to the language can be made only by Esperantists themselves, by common consent. In 1907 a schism took place in the movement when a delegation of prestigious university professors chose to back an anonymously submitted proposal for a revised version of Esperanto called Ido (meaning ‘offspring’). Keeping in mind the failure of an earlier artificial language called Volapük, which suffered constant modification, Zamenhof considered any requests for reforms as betrayal.