Edgar de Wahl

Edgar of choice (* 11.jul / August 23 1867greg in Olwiopol, .. † March 9, 1948 in Tallinn) created the plan language Occidental, which is now called Interlingue.

The German - Balt spoke by his own admission with his parents, German, Russian at school and on the street Estonian. Through a maid he also learned French. At high school he also learned Latin and Greek.

He studied in St. Petersburg mathematics, astronomy and physics and became an officer of the Russian navy. He spent most of his life in Tallinn ( Reval until the Estonian independence ). There he taught until his retirement at a secondary school mathematics and physics.

From choice already interested very early on the question of a universal auxiliary language. Around the turn of the year 1887/1888 he first learned Volapük know that however seemed to be too difficult. He soon moved to therefore just published Esperanto. He was one of the first Esperanto speakers at all and was one of the founders in 1893 of the first Esperanto Association in Russia, Espero in Saint Petersburg. In 1889 he published the Esperanto translation of a story by Mikhail Lermontov and dictionary Esperanto Spanish. Also at the first Esperanto magazine, La Esperantisto, he worked with.

He used to encourage correspondence with the other pioneers of Esperanto as Antoni Grabowski, Richard Henry Geoghegan, Wilhelm Heinrich trumpeter Axel F. Runstedt and the founder of the language, Ludwik Zamenhof Lejzer. They say he was the one who moved to Zamenhof, from - to change the ending of the pronoun of the time - on, to avoid confusion with adjectives in the accusative. He went for further reforms, but was defeated in a vote so 1894. Thereupon he left the Esperanto movement.

After years of preparation Edgar publish election in 1922 a new plan language, which he called Occidental. It reached a degree of dissemination and development in the 1920s and 1930s. After the outbreak of World War II, the contact between election and his supporters, however, almost completely ripped off. The last years of his life were spent in a sanatorium Estonian.

Soon after his death in 1948, his language was renamed Interlingue.