Vladimír von Szmurlo (pronounced "shmurlo"; 1865–1931) was a Russian Esperantist and railway engineer.
Life
He studied in
Saint Petersburg. Before learning Esperanto, he spoke the earlier auxiliary language of
Volapük, but was nonetheless very quick to adopt Esperanto. He launched the first Esperanto literature competition in Saint Petersburg in 1896. In 1905, following the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...
he moved to
Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...
until 1908, when he moved to
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...
, where he lived until his death. In 1910 he founded the Esperanto association
La Riga Stelo and became its first president. From 1910 to 1915 he was a
UEA delegate in Riga.
He worked with others on publications such as ''
La Esperantisto
''La Esperantisto'' (English: ''The Esperantist''), stylised as ''La Esperantisto.'', was the first Esperanto periodical, published from 1889 to 1895. L. L. Zamenhof started it in order to provide reading material for the then-nascent Esperanto ...
'', ''
Internacia Scienca Revuo'', ''
Lingvo Internacia'' and ''
Scienca Gazeto''. He edited and published the magazine ''Riga Stelo'', from 1910 to 1911. He wrote ''ANA (
Alfabeta Nomaro-Adresaro)'', also known as ''
Ariadna fadeno ("Ariadne's Thread")'', a first attempt at an Esperanto encyclopedia, in 1916/1917. However, because of
World War I, publication was forced to cease after the initial letter 'E', and the content of the whole was somewhat lacking.
Szmurlo also compiled a Complete Russian-Esperanto Dictionary in 1916. In his last years, he was interested principally in the various systems and institutions of the Lingvo Internacia (Esperanto, as it is most commonly known today).
In 1920 he created a derivative auxiliary language called
Arlingo, based on Esperanto, which was never published.
Published
* Biblioteko de Lingvo Internacia Esperanto, ("Library of the International Language Esperanto") (1895)
* Jarlibro Esperantista ("Esperantist's Yearbook") (1897)
* Esperanta Universalbiblioteko ("Esperanto Universal Library") (1910-1914)
* a collection of original works in Esperanto ''
Verda Radio'' (1911)
Linguists from Russia
Russian Esperantists
Latvian Esperantists
1865 births
1931 deaths
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