Can you help me find football match reports from between the two World Wars in Esperanto?

May 15, 2012 2:34 PM

Can you help me find football match reports from between the two World Wars in Esperanto? Specifically I'm looking for any match report featuring the Austrian national team of the era (1918-1937) but anything even remotely connected would be of help.

Here is some information that might help. The Austrian national team of the 1930s was known as the Wunderteam and some of their best known players were Ernst Ocwirk, Rodolphe Hiden, Anton Schall, Ernst Happel, Gerhard Hanappi, Walter Zeman, Matthias Sindelar, Fritz Gschweidl, Josef Smistik and Walter Nausch. I'm most interested in the Wunderteam, but anything from the end of the First World War onwards would be fine, because the Austrian national team had the same coach from 1919-1937, Hugo Meisl. Here is a list of all matches played by the Austrian national team (the Wunderteam era is considered to be matches 138 through 153).

I have no idea where to start. I'm not even sure such a thing would exist, but I'm hoping it might. Central Europe between the wars was the hub of the Esperanto movement and that's where the European International Cup was contested so the Austrian national team had a unusally many high profile games for a team of that era. Furthermore, they received silver at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, so a report on the 1936 Olympics might mention them.

posted by Kattullus to grab bag (8 answers total)

Białystok, Poland, is the home of Zamenhof, Esperanto inventor. Contact the Esperanto center (info in Esperanto!) here to see if they can point you toward, at least, the sports pages of newspapers from that time.
posted by mdonley at 2:49 PM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Also, Vienna has an Esperanto museum! They might be able to help out too.
posted by mdonley at 2:51 PM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Heroldo de Esperanto was apparently founded in 1920 and published weekly until the Nazis shut it down in 1936 (it was subsequently revived). I can't tell if there was a sports section, though. When I do a search on Worldcat for the journal/magazine title "heroldo de esperanto," I get lots of libraries with holdings from that era; you could try contacting one of them to see if they can help you.
posted by twirlip at 3:17 PM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

La Esperanta Gazetejo has some scans of Esperanto periodicals from that era.
posted by nangar at 3:38 PM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Esperantist here! Here are scans of Aŭstria Esperantisto, the official organ of the Austrian Esperanto Association, from 1924 to 1938. I'll look for articles on the national team.
posted by gubo at 5:07 PM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile here are more planned-language periodicals scanned at the Austrian National Library (which the museum is affiliated with). A few of them cover your period of interest.
posted by gubo at 5:18 PM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

For this time period, the Gazetejo mostly has issues of La Suda Kruco (Australia & New Zealand), with a smattering of other stuff. The only thing they have from 1936 is a single issue of Popola Fronto ("International news bulletin of the Spanish struggle against Fascism").

If it helps at all. Heroldo was called Esperanto Triumfonta from 1920 to 1925.

And yay, gubo!
posted by nangar at 5:54 PM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

A little more:

Esperanto Wikipedia has a list of early Esperanto periodicals. Most of them are bulletins of local Esperanto associations, but there are exceptions.

The Callender Athletic & Social Club Magazine published in England included an Esperanto supplement called Sub la Verda Stelo. It does seem to have been in print in the early 30s, not sure about the supplement.

La Verda Standardo (Hungary) is described as a general-interest magazine (plus Esperanto propaganda), so it would probably have sports coverage. It was published from 1907 to 1915 (so earlier than the time period you want.)
posted by nangar at 6:05 AM on May 16, 2012 [1 favorite]