Léon Bollack


Léon Bollack was a French trader who invented Bolak, a constructed language that also went by the name "the Blue Language", in 1899.

Personal

His parents were Hermann Bollack and Rachel Léontine Léon. The father was from Kreuznach in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, where the family name had been present "for centuries". The mother was from Paris.
Together with his wife Amelie Picard, he had three children: Léontine Rachel Alice, Lucien Armand Bollack, who became an engineer, and a second daughter, Fanny Louise Bollack.
He died in 1925. His daughter, Léontine, changed her name to Alice and married Roger-Angel Olchanski. Together they had two sons, Jean and Daniel, although it was reported that the second son was born as a result of an affair with Alex Virot, a sports journalist.

New international languages

After a few years promoting Bolak, he abandoned the struggle in favour of the movement backing Ido. It is possible that the blue color of the Ido flag was his proposal. He uttered the phrase: "It seems to me that both the Esperanto and Volapük poets are worthy only to be the objects of ridicule."
Bollack inspired H.G. Wells, who mentioned him in his book A Modern Utopia.

Works

Books

Bolak