World Peace Congress

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World Peace Congress 1907

The World Peace Congress is a regular international event by pacifists .

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars , pacifist ideas became particularly important in Great Britain. In some cases, they linked to older religious ideas ( Quakers , Mennonites ). Around 1830 peace societies were formed in various countries. A first peace congress took place in London in 1843 . However, this received hardly any attention outside the Anglo-Saxon region. Further congresses followed in Brussels (1848), Paris (1849), Frankfurt am Main (1850), London (1851), Manchester (1852) and Edinburgh (1853). International participation was high, but the English and American peace societies dominated.

The movement was boosted by the wars since the Crimean War of 1853, the American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification of the 1860s and 1970s. A first international peace congress met in Geneva in 1867 .

But it was not until 1889 that a broader movement began to develop with the congress in Paris, which from then on held regular congresses. 310 people were gathered at the first World Peace Congress. In the following decades, 23 congresses followed, for example in London in 1890, in Budapest in 1896 , in Lucerne in 1906 and in Munich in 1907 . The international peace movement reached the height of its importance in the 1890s. Carriers were around 3,000 activists. The Hague Peace Conferences at government level were not in the direct tradition of the World Peace Congresses. The 1914 congress should have taken place in Vienna in September, but did not take place any more due to the outbreak of the First World War .

For the Paris World Peace Congress in 1949, Picasso designed the symbol of the peace dove , which is one of the best-known examples of the peace movement . The Dutch Yiddish singer Lin Jaldati also took part this year.

Esperanto

Bertha von Suttner saw two related endeavors in pacifism and the peace movement. Already at the first international world peace congress in Paris, people spoke out in favor of promoting the introduction of an auxiliary language , albeit not yet thinking of Esperanto . However, since advocacy for this new utopia of a world language was viewed as a relapse at that time , it met with massive resistance and was rejected. However, the idea was not forgotten and was constantly recalled, especially by Gaston Moch . Although he had many supporters behind him at the 9th World Peace Congress in 1897, his request to introduce Esperanto as the congress language in addition to the four main languages ​​in force at the time was almost unanimously rejected.

However, the Bern Peace Office began to deal with the question of the auxiliary language. It chose Moch as its speaker and sent him to the 14th Congress in Lucerne. When Moch's application there was rejected again, Moch started a petition for the approval of Esperanto as the congress language of the world peace congresses and received a positive response from over 1200 postcards from 27 countries. The peace press now began to be interested in the advantages of just one auxiliary language and national peace congresses made appropriate decisions.

At the 1907 World Peace Congress in Munich, the mood had changed. In addition to representatives of Esperanto, two other planned languages, the universal and the idiom neutral , were also present this time. Due to his persistently bad experience, Moch was now so discouraged that he did not want to apply again. It was thanks to Wilhelm Foerster , a scholar from Berlin, that the possibility of introducing a further congress language for the next congress in London was discussed and Esperanto was decided upon. When Kacumi Kuroita, Japanese historian and father of the Japanese Esperanto movement, was the first to use the new language in London, he also mentioned that only the decision made in Munich would have enabled him to participate.

Web links

notes

  1. ^ Pablo Picasso: The Dove, 1949. In: ART | DATES. Retrieved on August 14, 2019 (German).
  2. ↑ Art Collection :: ARTIFACT. Retrieved August 14, 2019 .
  3. ^ Jüdische Zeitung, ( Memento from February 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) December 2008.
  4. ^ Heinrich Arnhold : Esperanto and the peace movement. In: Albin Möbusz : Esperanto - a culture factor, Vol. 1 , pp. 131-136