Esperanto

In July 1887, so that's 125 years ago this month, Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof published his book on a new language which he hoped would unite the world: Esperanto. The idea was to create a universal second language, which would transcend political and other barriers, thereby smoothing over or avoiding misunderstandings between people. Like returning to the days before the building of the Tower of Babel, when everyone still shared the same language.

Zamenhof grew up in a multi-cultural, multi-language environment in the Russian Empire where he saw that categorising people with regard to such things as race, religion and language was only creating division and hatred. A born idealist, he vowed to come up with a solution which would unite people once more and give them the tools to work towards a world of peace.

It took him ten years to develop the language and his results were penned down in his book 'Unua Libro'. The idea of this language was picked up swiftly and in 1905 there were so many followers that a worldwide congress could be held in Paris. Since then, many countries all over the world have organised congresses, which were usually promoted with stamp issues.

You may have detected a certain green theme by now. Well done! You see, during that 1905 Congress, an Esperanto flag was adopted, consisting of a green star on a white field, a so-called canton, in a green field. The colour green, and the star, have since been potent symbols of the Esperanto movement, and as such have often been used by stamp designers.

One of the earliest Esperanto stamp issues is probably that of the Soviet Union. They issued two stamps in July 1926, to mark the Sixth International Proletarian Esperanto Congress, held in Leningrad.

Top marks should go to Yugoslavia, who issued what must be the most expensive Esperanto stamp. In 1953, they issued two stamps to mark the 38th Esperanto Congress, in Zagreb. The postage value is a fairly common stamp, but the airmail value commands a three figure sum nowadays. That is probably because of its very high face value of 300 dinar and its small print run. Only 20,000 stamps were printed, compared to 300,000 for the postage value.

This stamp has to share the limelight, though, with its companion issued by the Yugoslav Military Government in Trieste. It is basically the same issue as that of Yugoslavia, but in different colours and with the overprint 'STT Vujna'. Here, too, it is the airmail stamp which commands the highest price of the set, being on a par with the Yugoslavian stamp.

1987 postcard from Hungarian Esperanto Chess Club

All in all there is plenty of scope for an interesting collecting on the Esperanto theme, with not just stamps, but plenty of cinderella and commemorative covers to be found as well.

See yous later

Adrian

UPDATE:
As a result of the many comments on this blog post, there is now a dedicated forum thread here on collecting Esperanto on  stamps. Hope you'll have a look and join in with your own items!