Kerckhoffs's patriotic reassurances proved somewhat successfuclass="underline" he was able to persuade the board of the Ecole des hautes etudes commerciales to hold courses in Volapuk. By 1889, the school was offering fourteen weekly courses, and one of them was specially tailored for employees of the Grand Magasin de Printemps, an elegant department store. In fact, among the 470 French Volapukists who reported their profession for the 1889 edition of the French Volapukist yearbook, 160 of them were active in the commercial sec- tor (mostly bookkeepers, employees, agents, merchants, and traders).24
Volapuk enticed people with different tastes. We find people interested in standardizing communication and information technology, such as ste- nographers and librarians. There were also Volapukists concerned about the utility of a standard means of communication for commercial and scientific purposes, as well as people who saw Volapuk as an instrument for world peace.
This constellation of interests shows that Volapuk had a strong potential for growth in different directions and the chance to become the international language it claimed to be. But in order to realize this possibility, it was nec- essary to organize accordingly and draw more attention from the public, something which ultimately depended on Schleyer's leadership skills.
The first official congress of Volapuk took place in 1884 in the public hall of Friedrichshafen am Bodensee, a small town on the banks of Lake Con- stance. It was a three-day congress, attended by only about thirty Volapukists from Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Switzerland, Austria, Alsace, and Lorraine. The French and American Volapukists were not yet represented. Since all of them spoke German, Volapuk was barely used. This first congress launched the movement and was a platform to celebrate Schleyer's genius and linguistic virtuosity. Presiding over its first session was the German physician Rupert Kniele, an old subscriber to the Sionsharfe, and Schleyer's closest associate.25 The hall was decorated with a bust of Leibniz and a painting that represented the children of the five continents, embracing the globe. All sessions began with the children of the local choir singing the Volapuk anthem, with nods to peace and brotherhood, and the congress was closed with a banquet, toasts, and fireworks.26
The friendly atmosphere of this small congress prompted Schleyer to agree to some small changes in the grammar, and after "urgent petitions from many people" he even considered using the official spelling of German instead of his own spelling system in his publications. More importantly, the congress decided to make further efforts to expand the movement internationally. To grow in an orderly manner, congressional delegates agreed on the publica- tion of an official journal that would give the names of those who were going to hold official positions in the movement. The congress also approved a first detailed account of the formal hierarchy of the movement. At the top of the hierarchy were the national leaders, followed by world language instructors and local leaders, with rank and file supporters at the bottom. Towering above them all was Schleyer, who had made himself leader for life. As his confidant, Rupert Kniele, said, "Volapuk was really put into motion" at this congress.27
Delegates made an important decision to emphasize Volapuk as an "internationale Handelsverkehrsprache," a language for international, com- mercial communication, which explains Kniele's confidence in Volapuks future. Delegates hoped that this announcement would give Volapuk a nar- row field of application. They also added an important caveat in the official motto of the movement. Originally it read "Menade bal puki bal," or "One human race, one language," but the new motto was "One human race, one language—without prejudice to the mother language" (unbeschadet der Muttersprache).28
These changes were intended to assuage serious anxieties that Schleyer and his associates had already provoked. Volapuk, it turned out, had power- ful enemies.
CHAPTER4
"Pandemonium in the Tower of Babel": The Language Critics
Kerckhoffs's Association fran^aise pour la propagation du Volapuk was es- tablished in 1886, three years after the Association nationale pour la propa- gation de la langue fran^aise, later called the Alliance Fran^aise. The Alliance was an organization "eminemment patriotique," whose goal was to "propa- gate the [French] language in the world [in order to] ensure the purchase of our national products, and expand its political and moral clientele [of France]." If Kerckhoffs envisioned a diglossic international regime with French domi- nating in politics and diplomacy and Volapuk in commerce, were not his ef- forts undermining the patriotic goals of the Alliance? By giving up French, was he not a defeatist? Was he really serious when he asserted that Volapuk could derail German and English in the field of commerce, and consequently help French to restore its international reputation?
Given the unfamiliar and, to some, weird, qualities of Volapuk, aston- ishment and ridicule was a common response to the confident claims of Kerckhoffs and fellow Volapukists. The language was depicted as a squeaky absurdity, an irksome nuisance or, as Le Figaro put it, a maddening "hodge- podge of languages, a potpourri of dialects, a Russian salad of different patois . . . the revenge of the Tower of Babel. Masonic signs put into words." Schleyer's language became the subject of popular and strident criticism, from the print media to songs in cabarets. This criticism targeted the lan- guage, and also the sanity of its supporters. Is it possible to seduce a woman speaking Volapuk, asked Le Soir? French journalists could not hide their de- light when reporting the main episodes in Volapuks short history. Thus when other artificial languages entered the scene to question Kerchhoffss efforts, Le Bien Publique suggested new lyrics for the tune Malborough s'en va en guerre (Marlborough is going to war):
Kerckhoffs est dans la peine Mirliton, Mirliton, Mirlitaine! Kerckhoffs est dans la peine Chez Sarcey il s'en va.
Bonjour, cher camarade, Volap uk, der Teufel, est malade Bonjour, cher camarade, Helas! il en mourra1
And when rumors about the first squabbles in the Volapuk camp reached France, a journalist felt compelled to "gravely announce to its readers that conflicts have irremediably mounted among the Volapukists. The Munich congress . . . far from being a concert was like a pandemonium in the Tower of Babel. The students have finally decided that they know better the new lan- guage than the one who invented it. Our article proposes, thus, to Volapuk- ize French. It will suffice to prune some Chinese-cisms and simplify the syntax a little bit to make it the best Volapuk."2
Music halls and cafe concerts joined in. As a Volapukist complained, the language had become a trendy topic, although less among the serieux than among the boulevardiers, the clientele of the cabarets and cafe concerts of the boulevards.3 Unfortunately for the Volapukists, even when some distinguished citoyens—such as the senator and president of the Chamber of Commerce, Charles Dietz-Monnin, or Frederic Passy, member of the Chamber of Depu- ties and future co-founder of the Interparliamentary Union—had given a vote of confidence to Schleyer's language, Volapuk became a rich source of enter- tainment, mockery, and ridicule in the operettas and vaudevilles. The ballet volapuk performed in the Folies Bergeres, one of the fanciest cafe concerts of the time, staged singers and actors dressed in colorful national costumes, and speaking different tongues. Unable to understand each other, Progress comes to their aid, it opens the doors of a Volapuk Institute, and things return to "normal"—with everybody uttering a rational, though incomprehen- sible language.4 If globalization, standardization, and progress called for an international language, many French people were only ready to accept it if it were their own language.