Gaston Moch

Gaston Moch

Gaston Moch (born March 6, 1859 in Saint-Cyr-l'École , Seine-et-Oise, † 1935 ) was a French pacifist and supporter of the Esperanto movement .

He was an advocate of a democratic army, he supported Alfred Dreyfus and was one of the leading figures in the French peace and Esperanto movement. Gaston Moch is the father of Socialist Minister Jules Moch .

pacifist

As a polytechnician and captain of the artillery, he published a treatise in 1893 in which he predicted a four-year war that would ultimately unite the fighting peoples. In 1894 he resigned from the army and devoted himself to pacifist propaganda. He propagated Franco-German unity and defended human rights. He founded and directed the l'Espoir pacifiste (1905-1908) and was the first president of the Institut international de la paix ( Monaco ).

Esperanto

Moch was among the first in France to take an interest in the international language Esperanto proposed by Ludwig Zamenhof in 1887 . He learned Esperanto in 1889 and was committed to it in a variety of ways.

He linked Esperanto with his work as a pacifist. For example, on April 6, 1905, he founded the Internacia Societo por la Paco in Paris, which invited 39 members from 12 countries to an assembly at the 1st Esperanto World Congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer in August. The society published the magazine "Espero Pacifista", which appeared until 1908. At the end of August 1905 the magazine had 124 subscribers.

The first general assembly was held during the 14th World Peace Congress, which took place in Lucerne from September 19 to 23, 1905. Moch was elected chairman, Zamenhof became honorary chairman.

Together with other pacifists, including Alfred Hermann Fried , Henri La Fontaine , Charles Richet , the series "Libraro Pacifisma" was published in Paris, in which Esperanto translations by writers of leading pacifists such as Henri Dunant, Andrew Carnegie , Otto Umfried and others, were spread.

When the disputes about reforming Esperanto came to a head, Moch decided, like some other pacifists, in favor of the "Ido" reform project. At the end of the 1920s, he was critical of the sense of planned languages ​​as a whole.

In 1879, as a trained polytechnician, he dealt with Leibniz and dealt with the problems of international communication.

Major works

• La Défense nationale et la défense des côtes (1894) Texts en ligne
• L'Alsace-Lorraine devant l'Europe, essai de politique positive (1894)
• Alsace-Lorraine, réponse à un pamphlet allemand (1895)
• La Question de la langue internationale et sa solution par l'esperanto (1897)
• L'Ère sans violence (1899)
• L'Armée d'une démocratie (1900)
• La Réforme militaire. Vive la milice! (1900)
• Vers la fédération d'Occident: désarmons les Alpes! (1905) Texts en ligne
• Histoire sommaire de l'arbitrage permanent (1905)
• Question de la légion étrangère (1914)
• La Relativité des phénomènes. Les Conceptions nouvelles d'Einstein. La Masse et l'Energie. L'Espace à quatre dimensions et le temps. Les Mondes fictifs (1921)
• Initiation aux théories d'Einstein (1922)
• Moch, Gaston, Pri malarmo: ĥimeroj kaj realaĵoj / Gaston Moch. - Paris 1907: Presa Esperantista Societo no.9 - 89 p. ; 20 cm - (Studoj pri la haltigo de l'armadoj; no.1)
• La Question de la langue International et sa Solution par L'Esperanto, V. Girard & E. Brière, Paris, 1897, 52 pages

Works in Esperanto

• Historio resuma de l'arbitracio konstanta (1905)
• Pri la elparolado de esperanto (1907)

Translations from French into Esperanto

• Tristan Bernard: Angla lingvo sen profesoro, unuakta Komedio el franca lingvo (1907)
• Edmond About: La rêgo de la montoj: el la 153a milo de la franca eldono (1909)
• Anatole France: Pensées de Riquet et Les Juges intègres, traduits en esperanto primitif et en ido. Pensoj de Henĉjo kaj La Neriprocebla jugistoj de Anatole France. Pensi di Riquet e La Judiciisti yustega, da Anatole France (1921)