History

The Mondpaca Esperantista Movado (World Peace Esperantist Movement), founded in 1953 in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, had great significance for the reorganizing of the 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...

 movement in European socialist countries. The movement published a montly journal called PACO. The magazine was published every month in a different country, sometimes behind the Iron Curtain

Iron Curtain

The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...

. The January issue might have been edited by the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese MEM section, the February issue by the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 section, the March issue by the Bulgaria

Bulgaria

Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

n section, etc. Also, the German Democratic Republic’s MEM section published several issus of PACO.

German Democratic Republic

Even before the formalization of the Esperantist movement in the GDR, there had already appeared a ten-page 1960 Esperanto booklet published by the German Peace Council. Edited by Ludwig Schödl

Ludwig Schödl

Ludwig Schödl , born in Berlin, was a brilliant militant of the Workers' Esperanto Movement in Germany as well as abroad between the 20's and the 30's...

 (Neuruppin

Neuruppin

Neuruppin is a town in Brandenburg, Germany. Located on the shore of Ruppiner See , it is the capital of the district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin. Population: 32,800 .-Overview:...

) and Karl Maier

Karl Maier

Karl Maier was a German Esperantist and member of the Universala Esperanto Asocio, for more than 50 years.Maier learned Esperanto in 1924. After emigrate form Germany in 1930, he was living with Esperanto enthusiasts among United States, Mexico and Japan...

 (Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

), it had a circulation of 6,000 copies.

After the foundation of the cultural association Centra Laborrondo de Esperanto-Amikoj ("Central Workers' Circle of Friends of Esperanto", known since 1981 as the Esperanto Association (Cultural Association) of the GDR), this organization became the GDR’s MEM section, and from 1966 to 1989 it published regularly the annual special edition of PACO. The edition of 1966 had 32 pages, those from 1967 and 1968 had 36 pages, and the rest had 40 pages.

There was a regular bimonthly series, printed with better-quality paper. In addition, the annual special issue from the GDR brought more content and had better design. These editions of PACO contained material about international political problems and multiple cultural articles, as well as notes on 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...

, esperantology

Esperantology

Esperantology is a special Esperanto linguistics whose subjects are word construction, word assembly, word introduction and transcription of umbrella terms and proper names. Esperantology principles of word construction are exemplary of the principles of necessity and sufficiency which postulate a...

 and studies of the advance of the Esperantist movement in East Germany and abroad.

To be of a similar standard to widely circulated publications, it had the collaboration of professional graphic artists from the Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 editorial office of Zeit im Bild. This way the magazine was richly illustrated and presented in the A4

A4

A4, A04, A.IV, A.4 or A-4 may refer to:* A4 paper, a paper size prevalent in many countries , defined in the ISO 216 international standard...

 format. The print run was generally from 5,000 to 6,000 copies. MEM

Mondpaca Esperantista Movado

The Mondpaca Esperantista Movado was an Esperanto association founded in 1953 in Austria by Rudolf Burda. Its aim was “to use the Esperanto to serve the peace and the reciprocal understanding between the peoples”. Its official magazine was PACO....

 distributed the magazine not only inside the GDR but worldwide. Cumulatively, the 24 issues published totalled 944 pages. Issue 162 of 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...

(1990) contained a cumulative index of articles.

The chief editors (at least formally) were Eugen Menger, from 1966 to 1971, and Detlev Blanke

Detlev Blanke

Detlev Blanke is an interlinguistics lecturer at Humboldt University of Berlin. He is one of Germany's most active Esperanto philologists and has been since 1991 both the chair of the Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik and the editor of its newsletter, Interlinguistische Informationen...

, from 1972 to 1989.