Soros Series: Esperanto is (not) dead: About the enduring discrepancy between the perception of Esperanto as a language without culture and its extraordinary cultural achievements

Speaker: Ulrich Becker

Throughout the history of Esperanto, its proponents have been confronted with the criticism that they are promoting a language that cannot develop a sustainable culture, because its speakers are not an ethnically or culturally definable entity or based in a geographically unified area. The actual cultural achievements of Esperanto speak an entirely different language, both with regards to the cultural output within the Esperanto movement and the cultural impact Esperanto has been having on the world.

Ulrich Becker is the principal of the publishing house Mondial that specializes in books in and about Esperanto and publishes one of the movement’s leading literary magazines. He is an author of prose and poetry in Esperanto and German, was a co-founder of the German Society for Interlinguistics and worked as manager, organizer, and editor in national Esperanto associations.

More information: www.soroslectures.org

The Graduate Center, CUNY, Room 9207