Jan Filip (priest)

The complete works of the brothers Jan and Karel Filip were made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Czech Republic license, as demonstrated by OTRS record no. 2009072310074867. The signed declaration can be found in the archives of the Czech Esperanto Association.

In the year 1968, the Swiss Esperantist and translator Madlen Welsh visited him in Kratonohy, so that she could personally meet this eminent Esperantist who had written extensive dictionaries and many books in Esperanto. At that time, his plays were being performed in Switzerland: La Turo Inter Nuboj ("The Tower Between Clouds") and Fino de la Mondo ("End of the World"). In 1970, he translated many religious songs for young Catholic Esperantists, which were sung in tent camps in Herbortice.

In the year 1950, after the beginning of a strong political leaning towards communism, he was prohibited from teaching and only allowed to provide pastoral care. He provided pastoral care for five years in his hometown Přibyslav, for four months in Veliš, for four years in Chleny, for four years in Letohrad, and for nine years in Kratonohy, near Hradec Králové, where he died.

He was born into the family of Francisko Filip, a weaver in Přibyslav who already had four other children: Jan's brothers Venceslao and Francisko and sisters Karla and Maria. After four years, another brother, Karlo, was born. Jan Filip spent his childhood in Přibyslav, where he attended primary school. He was accepted to a high school in Prague, which he finished with an abitur, on which he received an excellent score, in 1931. In Hradec Králové, he studied at a theological seminary for pastors, and in 1936 he became a priest. He celebrated the solemn first fruit mass in his hometown Přibyslav.

Filip, a talented nine-year-old, learned Esperanto in 1921. In 1925, at age 13, he began to write an extensive Esperanto-Czech dictionary, because at the time nothing of the kind had ever been published. After three years he finished the compilation of the dictionary, with the help of his brother Karel Filip, and despite the fact that two more years passed before it was published in 1930, he became the youngest lexicographer in the world. A second edition appeared in 1947, and a reprinting in 1987. His Esperanto-Czech and Czech-Esperanto dictionaries, also written with his brother Karel, appeared in Prague in 1958 with 550 and 450 pages.

Jan Filip (born 9 December 1911 in Přibyslav; died 21 November 1971 in Kratonohy, near Hradec Králové) was a Czech priest, doctor of theology, professor, writer, Esperantist, and lexicographer.