A poor country clergyman of a poor parish must be everything to everybody. Today, a child falls into the water and drowns; the country clergyman must make the first attempts at resuscitation. Tomorrow, a day labourer’s cottage burns down; the parish priest has to command the pitiful village fire brigade. Another time, a carpenter falls from the scaffold or the schoolmistress from the steep school staircase, both nearly bleeding to death before the doctor arrives; the parish priest must render the first and most urgent aid. Yet another time, a frozen drunkard is found in the open fields; again, the parish priest attempts at bringing his soul back to life, but in vain. The haggler and usurer sells the last tile from the widow’s roof. Out of despair, she is on the point of throwing herself into the lake. The parish priest learns of it, and keenly participates in bidding at the auction, buying her favourite things: crucifix, pictures of saints, prayer books, curtains and the inevitable coffee grinder..., to give everything back to the much surprised woman after the auction. All this and much more of such befell me, the inventor of the World Language, at my last, poor village parsonages, to the letter as depicted here. –

At my second to last parsonage at Krumbach near Messkirch, in a side valley of the upper Danube vale, where once the lords of Waldsperg dwelt at a knight’s castle, I had, amongst other needy parishioners, a most pitiable widower as a neighbour. The same became impoverished so much that he had to sell his hovel and only was left a miserable closet in his own former house, to live in. His name was ‘Schwarz’ (Engl.: black), and indeed his lot blackened ever more. At least he had two grown-up children who were able to work. However, his daughter trod the path of sin, and died from the consequences of sin. –

One morning, adding to his wretchedness, his closet burned down with all his few belongings. We, his neighbours, came running and extinguished the fire with might and main; likewise my only sister. She put on her shoes over the bare feet, the morning was cold. Standing in the water of the brook, she caught a cold such that she came down with a serious illness and died soon after in the 33rd year of her life to my unspeakable grief because we had been very dear to each other. –

After the closet of Neighbour Schwarz had burned down, naturally his son didn’t like it any longer with his wholly empoverished father. He went to America. At their parting, the father said to his son: “Oh my dear sun! when you are in America and earn some money, so please also think of me, and send me some kreutzers of money every now and then!” The son promised this under tears. He happily got over the ocean, yonder found work in a mine and earned money, but he seemed to have forgotten his poor father. Where else did the latter seek counsel but with his heighbour, the parish priest? With eyes red from crying, he came to me one day and lamented: “Children I have raised but now I am wholly forsaken. My daughter dead, my son in America, ungrateful to me.” –

I tried to console him and said: “Your son has ever been a good boy, so he cannot be ungrateful now. Have you never written to America to tell him of your distress?” He said: “Yes certainly; but he has never answered me.” On this, I replied from multifold experience of a similar kind: “Dear Neighbour! it happens often that from or to America addresses which need to be written in the English manner, are written in the German way such as they are read and not as they are written or printed. For example, the word ‘IOWA’ often is written ‘Eiauä’ in addresses... Now, post-office clerks to whom the address is incomprehensible will simply throw such letters to the side. If you, dear Friend! will next write a letter to America, so come to me with your son’s address which you mayhap can get from kinsmen in neighbouring villages! I will then always write the address for you in the right English way.” –

Much moved, Neighbour Schwarz thanked, followed my advice, found out the address of his son and took it to me. And indeed, I found it dreadfully deformed compared to English-American spelling, and written in the German way as it was read but not it was to be written or printed. (NB. Everybody going to America should earnestly be admonished to write his new address as it is printed, not as it is pronounced!) I reconstructed the botched address as best I could in the English way and advised my neighbour to write to his son in America forthwith. He did so; I wrote the address as it ought to be; the letter arrived in the Far West, and soon after, the son, who in fact was not ungrateful, answered his father with a letter  –  and money. Henceforth, owing to this, it was me who had to write the addresses of all letters to America not only of Neighbour Schwarz and other Krumbach people but also of many others from the whole region. –

It was then that it occurred to me with the force of a thunderbolt: “Oh, how wonderful would it be if all inhabitants of the earth possessed – instead of the hopelessly complicated and impractical orthographies such as the English one, but also the Russian, Polish, Swedish and German... – a common alphabet, a regular, uniform orthography, and indeed perhaps one single universal language of correspondence! How much vexation, pain, loss of time and money... could then be avoided! because as a consequence of the calamitous orthographies of natural languages, every year, by cursory calculation, some four and a half million undeliverable letters arrive at the Main Post Office at Washington and amongst these some forty thousand items of value, and this solely as the result of such muddled addresses as father and son Schwarz had exchanged before I helpfully stepped in. What an immense source of loss, vexation and impatience of all kinds, this not being the fault of the simple townsman but of all those scholars who for ever and ever jog along in the same old way, and do not want to know of a World Orthography and World Language. In this manner – from pure love to my parishioners and to all people who need to go out into the wide world, or have to do correspondence with the wide world – matured within me the idea of a universal language as now in fact exists in the eighth edition of my grammar. –

As I can say with good conscience, the ground for the execution of this idea was prepared by an almost uncessant linguistic study and study of languages of three and forty years. Because, when in the year of 1879 I came out to the public with my first World Language Alphabet, shortly afterwards followed by my World Language Grammar, I was 48 years of age. In my 5th year of life, an upright vicar of my native parish of Lauda (because at that time Oberlauda was a daughter church of Lauda) began to do declinations with me such as ‘mensa’, ‘mensae’... as prescribed by the good old Bröder Latin primer. So it went on with Latin until, from my 11th year onwards, my dear Uncle Franz Martin Schleyer continued my education in Latin and German at Königheim; fortunately he was a very good grammarian, like I am called by some a ‘born grammarian’. At the grammar school of Tauberbischofsheim I then learned, like all grammar school pupils, French, Greek, and Hebrew; in addition, through the kindliness of the then Professor and now Senior Schools Inspector and Privy Councillor Blatz of Karlsruhe who wrote one of the best detailed German grammars, I voluntarily learnt the English and Italian languages, the latter to timely prepare myself for an Italian travel which would lead me as far as Rome and Naples.... At Freiburg University I later studied Arabic and Syriac; during my years as vicar and locum tenens, especially at Wertheim, also Russian and Portuguese; all my other European and extra-European language up to the number of five and fifty I studied at Neukirch, Krumbach and Litzelstetten. Additionally, I eagerly pursued German, Latin, Greek, and even Syriac (Ephräm) poetry and the poetries of many other peoples who do already possess poetic classics in their languages. All of this I did in order to see how the human spirit expresses itself everywhere intelligently, logically, practically and artistically perfect in the most diverse languages, and in order to emboss my World Language with the stamp of simplicity, ease, logic, consistence, practical value and melodiousness to the highest degree possible, in which I have indeed succeeded according to the unanimous judgement of all just, impartial, religiously and politically unprejudiced men of all peoples who have truly and thoroughly studied my Volapük. I solely owe it to my all-gracious Creator that I incontestably possess an innate gift for languages through which the acquisition of the many foreign languages from my 5th year up to my 50th year of life – when my extremely overburdened memory with the millions of language forms and words, was considerably weakened owing to a severe illness – has become almost instinctive, very easy, pleasurable and not to be obliterated by any bitter disaoppointment. The idea of the World Language, thus prepared and being subjectively fully original (because I knew nothing of any of my predecessors Leibniz, Wilkins, Bachmeier..., and, to remain original, did not want to know of such) then came indeed to theoretical effectuation in a sleepless night, enigmatic to myself and even mysterious, at the presbytery of Litzelstätten, Constance, in the corner room of the 2nd floor which looks out into the garden, mid-March, 1879, in which night I vividly contemplated all the follies, grievances, afflictions and wretchedness of our time. To bear witness to the truth and to confess freely how I felt in that strange night, I can only say in all gratitude and humility: My good genius like a flash of lightning embued me with the full system of the world language ‘Volapük’. –

On March 31st, 1879, I then put together in writing the main traits of my grammar. Since then, compelled by pure love to the much-afflicted mankind I have sacrificed countlessly much time, effort, half nights, nervous energy, health, funds (postal expenses of thousands of marks...) my prebends, increase, habitation, garden, advancement for this my world-spanning idea, often only earning scorn and derision, and I should well hope that mankind might show its gratitude in my own lifetime yet, perhaps by way of a millionaire... who would furnish me with the means for an old age free of care, whereas I now arduously must live from my young literature. Many a person rather spends hundreds of thousands for whims, fads and quirks..., while he could immortalize himself forever as a patron and Maecenas of a beneficent idea. (Sapienti sat!)

Konstanz, 1888