Edgar von Wahl (Interlingue: ; born Edgar Alexis Robert von Wahl; 23 August 1867 – 9 March 1948) was a Baltic German mathematics and physics teacher who lived in Tallinn, Estonia. He also used the pseudonym Julian Prorók, and is best known as the creator of Interlingue, an international auxiliary language that was known as Occidental throughout his life.
He was born to the Baltic German noble von Wahl family in the then Russian Empire and spent most of his childhood in Tallinn (Reval) and the capital Saint Petersburg. He studied at the University of Saint Petersburg and at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. During and after his studies he served in the navy. After completing the military service in 1894 he lived permanently in Tallinn and worked as a teacher. During World War II, when most Baltic Germans left Estonia in 1939–1941, he decided to stay. He was arrested in 1943 by the Nazi German occupation authorities and placed in a psychiatric clinic because of alleged dementia. He stayed there until his death in 1948.
Wahl was engaged with interlinguistics from an early age. He was first introduced to Volapük by his father's colleague Waldemar Rosenberger and even started to compose a lexicon of marine terminology for the language, before turning to Esperanto in 1888. After the failure of Reformed Esperanto in 1894, of which Wahl had been a proponent, he started work to find an ideal form of an international language. In 1922, he published a "key" to a new language, Occidental, and the first edition of the periodical Kosmoglott (later Cosmoglotta). Wahl developed the language over several decades on the advice of its speakers, but became isolated from the movement (then centred in Switzerland) from 1939 after the start of World War II.
Biography
Ancestry
Edgar von Wahl was a member of the Päinurme line of the Wahl noble family. Edgar von Wahl's great-grandfather was Carl Gustav von Wahl, who acquired the Pajusi, Tapiku and Kavastu manors and was also the owner of Kaave Manor for a short time. Carl Gustav von Wahl had a total of 14 children from two marriages, from whom various Wahl lines descended. Of them, Edgar von Wahl's grandfather Alexei von Wahl, a civil servant who bought Päinurme manor in 1837, laid the foundation for the Päinurme line. In addition, he was a tenant at Taevere Manor, where Edgar's father Oskar von Wahl was born.
Childhood and youth Edgar Alexis Robert von Wahl was born on 23 August 1867 to Oskar von Wahl and Lydia Amalie Marie (married 1866 in Tallinn), in what is now Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv Oblast, in Ukraine (then in the Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire). The Wahl family had moved to Ukraine after his father, a railway engineer, started work on the Odesa–Balta–Kremenchuk–Kharkov railway in 1866. By 1869, the Wahl family had moved to Kremenchuk, where Wahl's brother Arthur Johann Oskar was born in 1870. After that, the family moved to Tallinn, where Wahl's two sisters were born – Lydia Jenny Cornelia in 1871 and Harriet Marie Jenny in 1873. The family later moved to Saint Petersburg where the third sister Jenny Theophile was born in 1877.
Wahl grew up in Saint Petersburg. He began studying at the Gymnasium in Saint Petersburg, graduating in 1886. He then studied at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Saint Petersburg and architecture and painting at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. While at university, Wahl joined the Baltic German operating in St. Petersburg, where he served as treasurer in the autumn term of 1891. He graduated in 1891 and in 1893 received a diploma as a teacher of drawing at the Elementary School of the Academy of Arts. He worked briefly as a substitute teacher in Saint Petersburg in the autumn of 1891, before entering the navy.
During his boyhood, Wahl learnt several languages; he became fluent in German, Russian, Estonian and French. In upper secondary school he studied Latin and ancient Greek, and Spanish at university. In addition to these, throughout his life he was able to make himself understood in nine other languages. He had an interest in creating languages from a young age:
Even in my youth, I had the idea of constructing a language. Full of stories from Cooper, Gustave Aimard etc, I played American Indians with my friends, and conceived the idea of a special quasi-Indian jargon for our games. It was made of Indian words taken from stories, and completed with other necessary words taken from diverse other languages. It had a grammar composed of mixed Ancient Greek and Estonian. This language was never used because my friends refused to learn it.
Military service
In 1892, Wahl volunteered to serve in the Russian Navy. During his service, he travelled extensively, visiting the Caribbean islands and the United States among other places. In early 1894, he received the rank of (Russian: ) and retired shortly thereafter. In the summer of 1904, Wahl was again called to active service. He served in the Baltic Fleet until October 1905, although he did not participate in the battles of the Russo-Japanese War.
According to the memoirs of Estonian artist , who knew Wahl as a youth, Wahl had been very proud of his Tsarist-era officer's uniform and he sometimes wore it even decades later:
It is, however, unlikely that Wahl participated in the suppression of the Sveaborg rebellion, having already been released from service by then. He may have been called to active service during World War I.
During his service in the navy, Wahl was awarded the 2nd and 3rd rank of the Order of Saint Stanislav and the 3rd rank of the Order of Saint Anne.Ohvitseride teenistuslehtede kartoteek [File index of officers' service sheets] (in Estonian). Registration required. After acquiring Estonian citizenship at the end of 1920 Wahl was from 1921 also registered as a reserve officer of the Republic of Estonia.
Tallinn 1894–1917
In 1894, Wahl moved to Tallinn, where he spent most of the rest of his life. That autumn, he started working as a teacher of mathematics and physics at St. Peter's High School of Science (now the Tallinn Secondary School of Science). Later he taught drawing at run by Baronness Elisabeth von der Howen, the , and the Tallinn Cathedral School. His teaching was interrupted only by his military service.
Wahl's teaching style was described in the memoirs of the later Estonian Minister of Education Aleksander Veiderma, who himself studied at St Peter's High School of Science from 1906 to 1909:
Mathematics and physics were also taught by Edgar von Wahl, a former naval officer who always had some catchy remarks about an event or person. He was very messy in conducting physics experiments: utensils or glass often broke. His attitude towards students was simple, which is also confirmed by the nickname Sass.
— Memoirs of Aleksander Veiderma
At the turn of the century, Wahl began to publish articles on linguistics in specialized publications, as well as writing in various Tallinn newspapers and magazines. Since 1898, Wahl had been a member of the Estonian Literature Society (German: Ehstländische Literärische Gesellschaft), a German-language association that regularly organised presentations by and for its members. Under the pseudonym Julian Prorók, he published a booklet Ketzereien: Keimzellen einer Philosophie (Heresies: Gametes of a Philosophy) in 1906 about his vision of global developments.
Wahl also entered politics before the outbreak of World War I. In 1913, he was elected to the Tallinn city council, and became a member of the council committee for the protection of monuments of ancient buildings. Despite his teaching position, Wahl did not address education issues on the city council. He was an active attendee at council meetings, but spoke little.
After the start of World War I, the Germans living in the Russian Empire were subjected to repression, from which Wahl did not completely escape; the , of which Wahl had been a member, was closed. In autumn 1914, he found himself at the centre of a propaganda campaign to change German place names. As a city councillor, he participated in discussions on the renaming of the city of Tallinn, following Mayor Jaan Poska's proposal replace its name with the Old Russian-language Kolyvan (in the discussion of the matter, the incorrect name Kalyvan was used). Wahl discovered that the oldest names of the city were Ledenets or Lindanisa. He was interested in how much it would cost to change the name, which was said to have been met with "general laughter" at the council. The votes required to change the name were eventually reached by the council, but the change itself did not take place.
Wahl was elected to the city council held just before the February Revolution in 1917. On the new council, he became a member of the city's fire department, public education, and pawnshop affairs committees, and continued as a member of the committee for the protection of monuments of ancient buildings. However, in August 1917, a new council was elected, and Wahl's political activities ceased.
Life in independent Estonia In February 1918, at the time of the Estonian Declaration of Independence, Wahl expressed a desire to join the voluntary militia Omakaitse. As a student who wrote weapon permits for volunteers: "Among those who wanted to bear weapons, I only remember one: my physics teacher, von Wahl. I think I remember it because of the mood that might have arisen in the soul of a young student when his teacher asks him for a weapon."N. Rg. Koolipoisid. Isiklikke mälestusi meie iseseisvuse saabumispäevadelt [Personal Memoirs from the days of the beginning of our independence] (in Estonian). – Kaitse Kodu 1934, nr 4, p. 135.
In 1919, the Secondary School of Science was divided by language: the Tallinn High School of Science taught in Estonian and the Tallinn German High School of Science taught in German. Wahl continued as a professor at the latter, where he taught classes in mathematics, physics, geography, cosmography, and drawing. He had a house on Eha Street, not far from the school, where students often went for follow-up work. He had designed this house in a marine style and it was therefore nicknamed the "cabin" by his students. Among his students, Wahl was a popular teacher who was particularly dedicated to teaching geography since he had travelled extensively. The students were impressed by the fact that Wahl was a member of the English Club, which operated at the school.
Wahl sometimes clashed with his colleagues, openly expressing his distaste for modern art, for instance comparing it to communism when invited to an art exhibition by the school's art teacher. He retired in the mid-1920s, but continued to teach part-time until 1933. He then took up his hobbies, especially constructed languages, which had become a passion since the days of Saint Petersburg. Additionally, he was editor of the magazine from 1929 to 1930.
During World War II Unlike his relatives, Wahl did not leave to be in 1939, deciding to stay in Estonia. He represented the idealistic pan-European idea and did not like the National Socialist government of Germany, calling it a "termite state". Wahl may also have chosen to stay to avoid abandoning his large archive. The danger of ending up in a retirement home in Germany might also have played a role: this had happened to several of his acquaintances. Wahl again avoided the to Germany that took place in the winter and early spring of 1941. He was certainly aware of the opportunity to leave, for when asked about his plans by one of his former students, he replied, leaving no doubt that his decision was stay in Estonia: