In Praise of Borders - NYTimes.com →

How appropriate that, in the midst of this confusion of languages and borders, an experiment was born to overcome both. In 1908, the Esperantist movement appropriated Moresnet, a small neutral zone [6] set amid Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands that had existed since 1816, and renamed it Amikejo (“Place of Friendship” in Esperanto). The Esperantist movement now had a territory as well as a flag and an anthem — but was that progress? Ironically, they added a language and a border to the mix instead of subtracting either. Not that it lasted long. It’s unclear whether the experiment was chewed up by World War I or had expired on its own before 1914.