Der Esperantist
esparanto Newsletter
Der Esperantist (German pronunciation: [deːɐ ˈʃperantist]; The Esperantist) was, from 1965 to 1990, the official newsletter of the East German Esperanto movement.
After organizing the Esperanto movement in the former East Germany, under the aegis of the quasi-governmental Cultural Association (Kulturbund), the new Centra Laborrondo de Esperanto-Amikoj ("Central Workers' Circle of Friends of Esperanto") began publishing the bilingual Der Esperantist in the A5 format.
Over the years the Esperanto-language content increased, and the number of German articles declined. The newsletter was edited by a committee, but the chief editors were Eugen Menger (from issue 1 in 1965 to issue 42 in 1970) and Detlev Blanke (from issue 43 in 1970 through issue 164 in 1990). Including a German-language special edition for the 1987 centennial of Esperanto, 165 issues were published (many of which appeared as double numbers spanning two months) with a total of 3,728 pages over the entire print run. Issue 163 of Der Esperantist (1990) contained a cumulative index of articles.
The print run was generally 4,000 to 5,000 copies, half of which were mailed to subscribers in East Germany. The remainder of the copies were shipped in bulk to other countries which had no local Esperanto publications, as well as to the Soviet Union, where there was interest in the newsletter. Numerous copies were also sent in free exchange for Esperanto publications from other countries. The newsletter was typographically modest and frequently was delayed in publication, but the collected copies of Der Esperantist are now important for the historiography of the GDREA, particularly as the published articles have now been indexed in depth in two slim volumes:
Linde Knöschke and Ino Kolbe: der esperantist 1 (1965) - 164 (1990).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Der Esperantist” as esparanto Newsletter. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as esparanto Newsletter. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5261144. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1990, 1970 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “Der Esperantist” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.