Detlev Blanke (30 May 1941 – 20 August 2016)[1] was a German Esperantist. He was an interlinguistics lecturer at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He was one of Germany's most active Esperantophilologists and was from 1991 to 2016 both the chair of the Gesellschaft für Interlinguistik ("Interlinguistics Society") and the editor of its newsletter, Interlinguistische Informationen. He and his wife, Wera Blanke, were especially interested in the evolution of language, particularly in the development of terminology for the constructed language, Esperanto, and questions of sociolinguistics. Blanke made a study of Eugen Wüster's work toward common international terminology and international standardization.
Academic career
After completing his initial university studies he worked as a teacher of German and geography. He earned a doctorate from Humboldt University of Berlin 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" 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 Working 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. In 1991 the Esperantists of the former East Germany formally affiliated with the German Esperanto Association (Germana Esperanto-Asocio) which had previously operated only in West Germany.
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., ISSN0138-550X
Interlinguistische Beiträge. Zum Wesen und zur Funktion internationaler Plansprachen. Sabine Fiedler, ed. Frankfurt: Peter Lang Verlag, 2006, 405 pp., ISBN3-631-55024-3
(with Till Dahlenburg): Konversationsbuch Deutsch-Esperanto. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie-Verlag, 1990, 210 pp. ISBN3-324-00508-6, (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)
