Joseph Schipfer
German linguist

Joseph Schipfer (8 April 1761 – 27 January 1843) was a German landowner and wine producer, today mostly known for his creation of the language Communicationssprache. He was born in Ransbach.
Biography
In his letter of 20 February 1840, titled "General Call to the Compassionate Humanity", Schipfer describes the suffering of the French inhabitants near the rivers Rhône and Saône and also provides a brochure on his "General Communication or World language (in German: Allgemeine Communications- oder Weltsprache)". Other brochures dealt with grammar and teaching materials for adults and children from 12 to 14 years of age.
In the same letter he wrote a description of how the live burial could be avoided and also made a proposal for general charity and that the profits from sales of his Communicationssprache materials be donated to the above-mentioned French populated areas. He died on 27 January 1843 in Niederwalluf.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6286878. VIAF identifies the subject as 69366688. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1761, 1843 and 1840.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Schipfer” 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.