Esperanto in the Czech Republic

Among the founders were MP Josef Hybeš, teacher Heřman Alferi, a well known Esperanto expert and promoter and Karel Pelant, Dělnické listy newspaper editor.

[1] Czechoslovakia was the only country in Eastern Europe where the Esperanto movement was not condemned by the government during the interwar period.

[5] The Esperanto Association in ČSR was being restricted to activity within the Czech community in 1939[6] up until 1940, when the union was disbanded by Gestapo.

[8] Other notable Czech Esperantists during this period include Antonín Eltschkner, Jan Filip or Petr Ginz.

The Communist Party took power in Czechoslovakia in 1948, and the Czech Esperanto movement began to be suppressed.

[12] Czech chemistry professor Vlastimil Novobilský began contributing to the Esperantist movement in the 1950s and continued to be active through the rest of the 20th century.

[13] Czech author Karel Píč became a controversial figure in the Esperanto community in the 1980s for his use of neologisms.

Following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1998, the Conference on the Application of Esperanto in Science and Technology was held in the Czech Republic until 2010 when it was relocated to Slovakia.