Life
Heinrich Albert Nidecker was born on 24 September 1894 in Grafenstaden, Alsace, to Georg Nidecker and Lucinda Rose Cooper. After completing gymnasium in Müllhausen, and studying at the cantonal school of St. Gallen [ de ], he studied pedagogy, natural sciences and the English language at the University of Basel in 1915. After completing teaching exams in 1920, in 1924, he earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree, with his thesis on the work of English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. After that, he taught foreign languages at schools in Basel.
In 1924, Nidecker started work as an assistant librarian at Basel University Library. He developed Basel's central catalogue, and was responsible for the departments of English philology and philosophy. A member of the Vereinigung Schweizerischer Bibliothekare [ de ] (Society of Swiss Librarians) and the Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkskunde [ de ] (Swiss society for folklore), Nidecker retired in March 1960. He married Marguerite Estermann on 6 June 1931; they had one son together. Nidecker died in 1982 at the age of 87, in Arlesheim. [5]
Views
Nidecker spoke several international auxiliary languages throughout his life, including Ido and Interlingue. He was president of both the Basel group of Idists and the Swiss Ido-Federation. At the 1928 Ido conference in Zürich, he spoke against the conservative arguments of Albert Nötzli; he later gave up the presidency of the Swiss federation and joined the Interlingue (then Occidental) movement. Nidecker wrote articles in several Occidental-language magazines, including Cosmoglotta and Helvetia, on topics such as language reform and economics. He led the Swiss Association for Occidental [ ie ] from 1934, and created several works in the language, including Occidental-language songs, a version of Goethe's poem Prometheus, and a German translation of an Occidental course by Frédéric Lagnel [ ie ]. [7]
In the magazine Helvetia, Nidecker wrote in support of the ideas of Silvio Gesell ( Freiwirtschaft ), who advocated for economic freedom. [8] In the same magazine, Nidecker also discussed Rudolf Steiner's advocacy for education reform. Nidecker was a supporter of both land reform and monetary reform.
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, grammar, and other characteristics are derived from natural languages. Interlingua literature maintains that (written) Interlingua is comprehensible to the billions of people who speak Romance languages, though it is actively spoken by only a few hundred.
Interlingue, originally Occidental ( ), is an international auxiliary language created in 1922 and renamed in 1949. Its creator, Edgar de Wahl, sought to achieve maximal grammatical regularity and natural character. The vocabulary is based on pre-existing words from various languages and a derivational system which uses recognized prefixes and suffixes.
An international auxiliary language is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primarily a foreign language and often a constructed language. The concept is related to but separate from the idea of a lingua franca that people must use to communicate. The study of international auxiliary languages is interlinguistics.
Richard "Ric" Berger (1894–1984) was a Swiss professor of design, decoration, and art history. He is best known for his numerous newspaper articles about historical monuments, mainly in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, including his own drawings of the buildings. Through these articles, he contributed to an increased interest in historical monuments and settings among many hitherto uninformed people, and probably also contributed indirectly to a wider interest in preserving and saving historical monuments from destruction.
Edgar von Wahl was a Baltic German mathematics and physics teacher who lived in Tallinn, Estonia. He also used the pseudonym Julian Prorók, and is best known as the creator of Interlingue, an international auxiliary language that was known as Occidental throughout his life.
The Centre de documentation et d'étude sur la langue internationale in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, was founded in 1967 by Claude Gacond. It is the main branch of the city's library and contains more than 20,000 bibliographic units. Interlinguistically neutral, CDELI aims to preserve documents in and about all kinds of constructed languages: it offers, in addition to Esperanto books and periodicals, the richest collections of materials about Volapük and Interlingue, among others.
Interlinguistics, also known as cosmoglottics, is the science of planned languages as it has existed for more than a century. Formalised by Otto Jespersen in 1931 as the science of interlanguages, in more recent times, the field has been more focused with language planning, the collection of strategies to deliberately influence the structure and function of a living language. In this framework, interlanguages become a subset of planned languages, i.e. extreme cases of language planning.
Esperanto II or Esperanto 2 was a reform of Esperanto proposed by René de Saussure in 1937, the last of a long series of such proposals beginning with a 1907 response to Ido with a project called Lingwo Internaciona, later called Antido 1. Esperanto II was one of several languages investigated by the International Auxiliary Language Association, the linguistic research body that eventually standardized and presented Interlingua de IALA.
Phiippe-André Schild was a Swiss linguist known for his work with international auxiliary languages, especially Interlingua.
Claus Killing-Günkel, in Esperanto also known as Nikolao Günkel, is a German teacher and interlinguist.
Interlingue and Interlingua are constructed international auxiliary languages.
The language Interlingue, originally Occidental ([oktsidenˈtaːl]), is an international auxiliary language created in 1922 by Edgar de Wahl, who sought to achieve maximal grammatical regularity and natural character. The vocabulary is based on pre-existing words from various languages and a derivational system which uses recognized prefixes and suffixes.
The constructed language Interlingue, originally known as Occidental, has a history spanning a century since its original publication by its creator Edgar de Wahl in 1922.
Alphonse Matejka was a Swiss exports specialist and proponent of international auxiliary language. Born in St. Gallen to a Czech father and Swiss mother, he worked in the textiles and watchmaking industries, and lived much of his life in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Matejka is best known for his work in the international language movement; first supporting Ido, and later Occidental, he led numerous organisations in the fields, and authored several books teaching these languages. Matejka also helped to found the Center for Documentation and Study about the International Language.
Weltdeutsch was a proposal for a German-based zonal international auxiliary language by chemist and interlinguist Wilhelm Ostwald. Published in 1916 in Ostwald's Monistic Sunday Sermons, Weltdeutsch was a reflection of the advance of German nationalism during the First World War – Ostwald had long been a pacifist, being aligned with the German Monistic League founded by Ernst Haeckel.
Interlingue literature broadly encompasses the body of fiction and nonfiction work created or translated into Interlingue, a constructed language created by Edgar de Wahl. Although largely composed of original short stories and translations published in the central magazine of the language, Cosmoglotta, full length novels and poetry anthologies also exist, in particular those by authors such as Vicente Costalago, Jan Amos Kajš, and Jaroslav Podobský.
Hermann Alfred Tanner, also known as Major Tanner, was a Swiss publisher, war correspondent, and author. Born in 1873 to a publisher father, he trained as a printer, before founding a newspaper company with his father. Tanner later was the director of several periodicals, primarily concerning winter sports in Switzerland. Tanner had an interest in colour theory, and patented a device for determining colour harmony in 1920.
Abram Antoni Kofman, also known as Abraham S. Kofman, was a Russian-Jewish accountant, and poet and translator in several constructed languages. From Odesa, Russian Empire, Kofman learned Esperanto in 1889 and was an early supporter of the language's adoption. He was one of the first Russian Jews to write poetry in Esperanto and has been described by several as a "pioneer". His work appeared in several Esperanto-language magazines and early anthologies, including the Fundamenta Krestomatio. He was the translator of several sections of the Hebrew Bible in both Esperanto and its daughter language, Ido. He was the first Ancient Greek–Esperanto translator, producing a rendition of parts of the Iliad starting in 1895.
Jules Meysmans was a Belgian stenographer and linguist, best known for coining the term interlinguistics. Meysmans invented his own shorthand system, one of several adaptations he made of existing systems. The founder of an institute for stenography, he was active in the international auxiliary language movement, supporting various projects throughout his life, including Volapük, Esperanto, Idiom Neutral, and Occidental.
Johann Robert Hörbiger (1885–1955), commonly known as Hans RobertHörbiger, was an Austrian engineer and proponent of the Welteislehre, a pseudoscientific theory which asserted that the base material of the universe was ice. Initially studying engineering and running a business with his father and brother, Hörbiger later worked to promote the theory; he worked under Heinrich Himmler in the Ahnenerbe, where the theory was used to generate weather forecasts.
