Jan Fethke
German-Polish film director
Jan Fethke (26 February 1903 – 16 December 1980) was a German-Polish film director and, under the pen name Jean Forge, a successful author. He also was a famous proponent of the language Esperanto.
Life
Born in Oppeln, Silesia, Jan Fethke attended Oppeln's grammar school. Together with his brothers Stefan and Edmond, Fethke learned Esperanto in 1919, when aged sixteen. After leaving grammar school, he edited the periodical Esperanto Triumfonta for several years.
Between 1923 and 1924 studied at Technical University of Danzig and worked for a local newspaper before moving to Berlin.
In 1921, aged 18, he penned his first novel, the German language Der ausgestopfte Papagei (The Stuffed Parrot). After 1923, he wrote his novels in Esperanto and used the pseudonym Jean Forge. His most important Esperanto works are Abismoj (Abysses, 1923), Saltego trans jarmiloj (A Leap across the Millennia, 1924) and Mr. Tot Aĉetas Mil Okulojn (Mr.
“Jan Fethke” enters the record as german-Polish film director. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fethke, German-Polish and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q22539. VIAF identifies the subject as 109687960. The Library of Congress control number is n93042215. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1903, 1980, 1919 and 1923.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jan Fethke” 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.