The International Esperanto League () was for 11 years the largest and most important neutral Esperanto federation, reuniting in 1947 with the Universal Esperanto Association from which it had broken away in 1936. Helsinki system At the UEA's founding in 1908, the question arose of how the UEA would work together with national Esperanto societies, some of which perceived the UEA as a competitor that might lure away their most active members. The UEA reached a loose cooperation agreement with the national federations in 1913, but it was of mostly symbolic character. Meeting at the 1922 World Esperanto Congress in Helsinki, delegates worked out a system which was to govern the Esperanto movement from 1923 till 1932. The Helsinki system divided each country's individual membership contributions between a national federation on the one hand and the UEA on the other and determined the membership of an international central committee. This committee decided on the use of funds for general tasks of the Esperanto movement, such as lobbying of international organizations. Cologne agreement With the rise in nationalism, by 1932 most of the separate national organizations had announced that they wanted a greater role in the UEA structure. After some considerable confrontation the 1933 World Congress in Cologne brought into being a "new UEA". The World Esperanto Association would become an umbrella organization with an international council or parliament, the vast majority of whose members would be delegates representing dues-paying national Esperanto federations. At-large Esperantists residing in countries without national Esperanto bodies would be entitled to elect a smaller number of delegates as well. The new election system weakened the traditional internationalist outlook of the UEA, removed from office the idealist Esperanto movement leaders like Edmond Privat, Johannes Waldemar Karsch and Andrei Cseh, and turned the UEA into a loose confederation of national Esperanto associations with conflicting nationalist ideologies. The German Esperanto Association not only tried to accommodate itself to the Nazi regime but even adopted its racist theories, expelled its Jewish members and minimized the extent of Hitler's human rights abuses. Esperanto's schism To avoid financial catastrophe resulting from the high cost of maintaining a Geneva office, in the spring of 1936 the UEA Central Office announced plans to move its headquarters to London. Leaders of the Swiss Esperanto Society challenged the decision in Geneva district court (Genfer Amtsgericht ) on the grounds that by the terms of the UEA