Detlev Blanke is an interlinguistics

Interlinguistics

Interlinguistics is the study of various aspects of linguistic communication between people who cannot make themselves understood by means of their different first languages...

 lecturer at Humboldt University of Berlin

Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

. He is one of Germany's most active Esperanto

Esperanto

is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

 philologist

Philology

Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

s and has been since 1991 both the chair of the Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik ("Interlinguistics Society") and the editor of its newsletter, Interlinguistische Informationen. He and his wife Wera Blanke are especially interested in the evolution of language — particularly in the development of terminology

Terminology

Terminology is the study of terms and their use. Terms are words and compound words that in specific contexts are given specific meanings, meanings that may deviate from the meaning the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language. The discipline Terminology studies among other...

 for the planned language

Constructed language

A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...

 Esperanto and in questions of sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...

. Blanke has made a keen study of Eugen Wüster

Eugen Wüster

Eugen Wüster was an industrialist and terminologist.- Career :Wüster became enthusiastic about Esperanto when he was 15, soon coming to the fore as an Esperanto translator...

's work towards common international terminology and towards international standardization.

Academic career

After completing his initial university studies he worked as a teacher of German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 and geography

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

. He earned a doctorate from Humboldt University of Berlin

Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

 in 1976 with his dissertation on comparative word construction of Esperanto and German. In 1985 he earned a second doctorate from Humboldt on constructed languages. (In the former East Germany such a second degree was known as "dissertation B", corresponding to the highest academic qualification of "habilitation

Habilitation

Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis based on independent...

" awarded to full professors in many European countries.) In 1988 the university appointed him "Honorary Lecturer of Interlinguistics."

Esperanto activities

Having first taught himself Esperanto in 1957, he later became secretary (1968 through 1990) of the Centra Laborrondo de Esperanto-Amikoj ("Central Workers' Circle of Friends of Esperanto"), a government-sanctioned affiliate of East Germany's Cultural Association (Deutsche Kulturbund). After 1981 the group became a part of the newly founded German Democratic Republic Esperanto Association (Esperanto-Asocio de GDR, GDREA). From 1970 to 1990 Prof. Blanke was also editor of the newsletter of those organizations, Der Esperantist

Der Esperantist

Der Esperantist was, from 1965 to 1990, the official newsletter of the East German Esperanto movement.After organizing the Esperanto movement in the former East Germany, under the aegis of the quasi-governmental Cultural Association , the new Centra Laborrondo de Esperanto-Amikoj began publishing...

. In 1991 the Esperantist

Esperantist

An Esperantist is a person who speaks or uses Esperanto. Etymologically, an Esperantist is someone who hopes...

s of the former East Germany formally affiliated with the German Esperanto Association (Germana Esperanto-Asocio) which had previously operated only in West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

.

Original works in Esperanto

• Ĉu lingvopolitikon por Esperanto?
• La "Enciklopedia vortaro" de Eugen Wüster
• "Esperanto" aŭ "Internacia Lingvo (ILo)": kiel nomi la lingvon?
• Esperanto kaj lingvistiko: sciencpolitikaj aspektoj
• Esperanto kiel faklingvo: elekta bibliografio
• Eugen Wüster, la planlingvoj kaj la "naturalisma skolo"
• La gazeto "Völkerspiegel"
• Kelkaj problemoj de la vortfarado de la germana lingvo kaj de Esperanto: Motivado de la signifo de Esperantaj vortoj
• Konfronta komparo de Esperanto kaj la germana lingvo
• Konfronta lingvistika komparo de etnolingvo kaj planlingvo
• Lingvoplanado en planlingvo: La esperantologio, ĉu priskriba aŭ preskriba scienco?
• La lingvoscienco kaj planlingvoj: Interlingvistiko kaj interlingvistikaj esploroj
• La malnovaj lingvoj kaj la problemo de internacia monda helplingvo
• Notoj (interview with the French linguist André Martinet)
• Pazigrafioj: La Esperanto-movado kaj sciencaj esploroj
• Planlingvaj projektoj kaj la planlingvo Esperanto: La antikvaj lingvoj kaj la problemo de internacia lingvo
• Pri Esperanto kaj interlingvistikaj aranĝoj en germanaj universitatoj: kaj pri kelkaj lastatempaj spertoj el Humboldt-Universitato
• Pri kio verkas esperantologoj kaj kie trovi iliajn publicaĵojn?
• Pri la aktuala stato de interlingvistiko: kelkaj teoriaj kaj scienc-organizaj problemoj
• Pri la "interna ideo" de Esperanto
• Pri la leksikografio de kelkaj planlingvoj: tipologia kaj bibliografia skizo
• Pri la stato de la internacia aplikado de Esperanto: Jubilea kongreso en Kopenhago
• Pri la termino planlingvo
• Pri la verbkonstruo en la germana lingvo kaj en Esperanto: kompara skizo
• Resumo kaj rezultoj de disertacio
• La rolo de la planlingvoj ĉe la evoluo de terminologi-sciencaj konceptoj de Eugen Wüster: omaĝe al la centa datreveno de la naskiĝo de Eugen Wüster

Original works in German

• Der Anteil der Arbeiter-Esperantisten bei der Entwicklung der deutsch-sowjetischen Freundschaft in der Zeit der Weimarer Republik
• Einige methodologische Probleme der Geschichtsschreibung über GDREA
• Esperanto als Sprache und Unterrichtsgegenstand
• Esperanto in soziolinguistischer Sicht
• Esperanto und Wissenschaft. Zur Plansprachenproblematik Berlin: Kulturbund der DDR, 1982, 88 pp. (2nd expanded ed.. 1986)
• Eugen Wüster und sein "Enzyklopädisches Wörterbuch Esperanto-Deutsch"
• Fachkommunikation in Plansprachen
• Das Glottonym 'Esperanto' als Metapher
• Grundfragen der Entwicklung von Plansprachen - unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Esperanto
• Interlinguistik in der DDR: eine Bilanz
• Interlinguistik und Plansprachen
• Internationale Kommunikation: die Möglichkeiten von Welthilfssprachen
• "Internationale Plansprachen. Eine Einführung" in Sammlung Akademie-Verlag, issue 34. Berlin, 1985, 408 pp., ISSN 0138-55 X
• Interlinguistische Beiträge. Zum Wesen und zur Funktion internationaler Plansprachen. Sabine Fiedler, ed. Frankfurt: Peter Lang Verlag, 2006, 405 pp., ISBN 3-631-55024-3
• (with Till Dahlenburg): Konversationsbuch Deutsch-Esperanto. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie-Verlag, 1990, 210 pp. ISBN 3324005086, (2nd expanded ed., 1998, Vienna)
• Leibniz und die Lingua Universalis
• Pasigraphien (Weltschriften): eine Skizze
• "Plansprache und Nationalsprache. Einige Probleme der Wortbildung des Esperanto und des Deutschen in konfrontativer Darstellung" in Linguistische Studien, Series A, No. 85, Berlin: GDR Academy of Sciences, 1981, 162 pp. (2nd ed., 1982)
• Plansprachen als Fachsprachen
• Plansprachen und europäische Sprachenpolitik
• Plansprachige Wörterbücher

External links

• Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik (GIL) (in German and English)
• Pri la germana reunuiĝo (in Esperanto)
• Ĉu manifesti kaj civiti? (in Esperanto)
• Works by and about Detlev Blanke in the Collection for Constructed Languages, Austrian National Library