Edgar by choice
Edgar Alexei Robert of choice (born 11 jul. / 23. August 1867 greg. In Olwiopol (today Pervomaisk , Ukraine); † 9. March 1948 in Tallinn ) created the constructed language Occidental , which today Interlingue called.
The German-Baltic said he spoke German with his parents, Russian at school and Estonian on the street. He also learned French through a maid. He also learned Latin and Greek at high school.
He studied mathematics, astronomy and physics in Saint Petersburg and became an officer in the Russian Navy . He spent most of his life in Tallinn (until the Estonian independence Reval). There he taught mathematics and physics at a secondary school until his retirement .
Von Wahl became interested in the question of a world auxiliary language very early on . At the turn of the year 1887/1888 he first got to know Volapük , which he found to be too difficult. That is why he soon switched to Esperanto, which had just been published . He was one of the very first Esperantists and was one of the founders of the first Esperanto society in Russia, Espero in Saint Petersburg , in 1893 . In 1889 he published the Esperanto translation of a short story by Michail Lermontow and a dictionary of Esperanto – Spanish. Also at the first Esperanto magazine, La Esperantisto , he worked with.
He maintained a lively correspondence with the other pioneers of Esperanto such as Antoni Grabowski , Richard Henry Geoghegan , Wilhelm Heinrich Trompeter , Axel F. Runstedt and the founder of the language, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof . It is said to have been he who persuaded Zamenhof to change the ending of the pronouns of the time from -an to -am in order to avoid confusion with adjectives in the accusative. He advocated further reforms, but was defeated in a vote in 1894. He then left the Esperanto movement.
After years of preparation, Edgar von Wahl published a new planned language in 1922, which he called Occidental . It achieved a certain distribution and further development in the 1920s and 1930s. After the outbreak of World War II, however, contact between von Wahl and his supporters was almost completely lost. He spent the last years of his life in an Estonian sanatorium.
Soon after his death in 1948, his language was renamed Interlingue .
Web links
- Literature by and about Edgar von Wahl in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Die kleine Enzyklopädie , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, Volume 2, page 874
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wahl, Edgar von |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German-Baltic language creator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 23, 1867 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Olwiopol , Ukraine |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 9, 1948 |
| Place of death | Reval |