Internacia Esperanto-Ligo - Cologne Agreement

Cologne Agreement

With the rise in nationalism, by 1932 most of the separate national organizations had announced that they wanted a greater role in the UEA structure. After some considerable confrontation the 1933 World Congress in Cologne brought into being a "new UEA". The World Esperanto Association would become an umbrella organization with an international council or parliament, the vast majority of whose members would be delegates representing dues-paying national Esperanto federations. At-large Esperantists residing in countries without national Esperanto bodies would be entitled to elect a smaller number of delegates as well.

The new election system weakened the traditional internationalist outlook of the UEA, removed from office the idealist Esperanto movement leaders like Edmond Privat, Johannes Waldemar Karsch and Andrei Cseh, and turned the UEA into a loose confederation of national Esperanto associations with conflicting nationalist ideologies. The German Esperanto Association not only tried to accommodate itself to the Nazi regime but even adopted its racist theories, expelled its Jewish members and minimized the extent of Hitler's human rights abuses.