Raymond Schwartz

Raymond Schwartz (8 April 1894 – 14 May 1973) was a French banker and Esperanto author who wrote many poems and novels in Esperanto, as well as skits which he directed for Parisian Esperanto cabarets. Schwartz was born into a French-speaking family in Metz, a city in Alsace-Lorraine (German: Elsass-Lothringen) that from the 1871 to the 1918 was part of Germany. He received a good education in Metz and spoke not only French and German often but also Latin and Greek.

Very early he became an Esperantist and dreamt of a better future through the diffusion of Esperanto. World War I, when he was conscripted into the German army and had to fight on the Eastern Front, was a disaster for him as a pacifist and for the Esperanto movement in general. After the war he did not remain in Metz, now again a French city, but moved to Paris, where he worked in a large banking firm until his retirement.