Chapter 7.2.4: The beginning and the first decades of the National Awakening.
The newspaper was run by Johann Voldemar Jannsen, an Estonian school teacher in Pärnu. It promoted the national consciousness of Estonians and had a big influence on the way Estonians thought about themselves. By 1862, the newspaper had over two thousand subscribers, which was a fairly big number for the time, and his messages also travelled by word of mouth from farm to farm. In 1864 Jannsen and therefore the newspaper, moved to Tartu and the newspaper was renamed Eesti Postimees.
The first issue of the newspaper.
Jannsen argued that Estonians were equal to other nations in terms of their aspirations and characteristics and that if they had something to be ashamed of, then it was their stupidity. He was vehemently anti-assimilation and was certain of a future for Estonians. He played a big role in ensuring that the Estonians who had been highly educated and climbed up the social ladder would remain faithful to their roots and not germanize. He himself was a prime example of that, he was one of the first middle-class Estonians who promoted, instead of hid, their Estonian identity. He had a very good writing style, managing to convey complex messages in a way that an average farmer would understand.
Like “Beiträge…” before it, Postimees became a focal point of the Estonian national movement. National figures would write articles for it and people would learn what was going on in the rest of the country, what events were taking place and what this or that person had said. This promoted a growing sense of “us” amongst Estonians and also helped to decrease the distance between the traditionally separate village communities.
In 1865, Jannsen also established the Vanemuine Cultural Society (Vanemuise Selts) in Tartu, which was composed of labourers, servants, craftsmen, civil servants and merchants of Estonian descent and not a single other intellectual other than Jannsen. This was a big change from the pre-national awakening societies. In addition to choir singing, the members of the society also organised social events, scientific lectures and gave agitating speeches. In the same year, by the example of Vanemuine, the Estonia Society (Estonia Selts) was founded in Tallinn.
By the beginning of the 1860s, there were 4 main centres for the national movement. Pärnu, where Postimees was based at the time; the parishes of Paistu and Tarvastu in Viljandimaa, which had very active farmers and schoolmasters; Tartu, which had the university and Learned Estonian Society; and St. Petersburg, which had a small group of middle class Estonians. All of these groups would cooperate in their endeavours.
The aforementioned group farmers would come up with the idea of establishing an Estonian high school. With the help of Jakob Hurt, who was studying in the University of Tartu at the time, the idea became a nationwide endeavour. In honour of the emperor who had abolished serfdom, Alexander I, it was decided that the school would be named Aleksandrikool. Thanks to the discussion of the idea, the wide cooperation between nationally minded individuals across the country formed for the first time, although the opinion of the state on the matter took decades to form.
Another larger endeavour of the farmers in Viljandimaa was a petition that the representatives of 24 rural communities from there sent to the emperor in the autumn of 1864, with the help of the Estonians in the capital, like the first Estonian academic painter Johann Köler and Philipp Karell, the personal doctor of the imperial family. It included several demands of economic, justicial and national nature. Even though the goals were not achieved and the presenters and writers of the petition fell under persecution, it did help to formulate the main goals of the national movement.
Autoportrait of Köler (1859). He lived from 1826 till 1899.
A painting of Karell by Köler (1886). Note the farmhouse in the background, symbolising the roots of the doctor.
Jakob Hurt, who I mentioned earlier, was the son of a village schoolmaster. He studied theology in the University of Tartu and became one of the first Estonian church pastors. Between 1872-1880 he served as the pastor at the parish of Otepää and from 1880 onwards at the St. John´s church in St. Petersburg, which was used by the Estonian Lutheran congregation there. He left Estonia because he came into conflict with the conservatively minded German pastors and church leadership, because he blamed them for ignoring and silencing the national aims of Estonians. He is very well known for his campaign to gather Estonian folklore and publishing it in scientific journals. He wrote 11 announcements in newspapers starting from 1871, where he asked people to send him folk songs and stories from their local areas. In total, he gathered 261 589 different pieces during his lifetime, over 120 thousand pages of material, which he categorised and published in 156 volumes between 1888 and 1906.
Jakob Hurt, (1839-1907)
A big success story was the first Estonian Song Festival that took place in 1869 in Tartu. It was organised by Jannsen and the Vanemuise Selts. The main purpose of the song festival was to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of the abolishment of serfdom in the governorate of Livonia with a big festival, to improve the sense of unity amongst Estonians and provide an opportunity to forge new relations. There were 800 singers and 60 instrument players from both the gouvernates of Livonia and Estonia, and over 10 thousand listeners. The song festival lasted for three days. The main highlight of the programme of the festival were the first Estonian patriotic songs: “Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm” (current anthem), “Mu isamaa on minu arm” and “Sind surmani”. The latter two were composed by Aleksander Kunileid, the first Estonian composer, and the lyrics were written by Lydia Koidula.
The original Kunileid version of the song. The modern day rendition is a bit different.
A portrait of Kunileid. (1845-1875)
A portrait of Koidula (1843-1886)
Lydia Koidula was the daughter of Jannsen, and as such already spent her childhood in a very nationalistic environment. She is considered the national poetess of Estonia, her romantic poetry promoted a love for the country and praised the beauty of its nature. Her nickname was “Emajõe ööbik” (The Nightingale of Emajõe river). In 1873 she moved to St. Petersburg with her husband, and lost connection with her friends in Estonia. She would write some melancholic poems, where she would express her longing for her homeland. One of those poems was turned into a song in the 90s:
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/eesti-muld-ja-eesti-s%C3%BCda-estonian-soil-estonian-heart.html
The poem (lyrics) with an English translation.
She was also a playwright, writing the first Estonian theatre plays, which would be performed by Vanemuine and set the stage (pun intended) for the cultural society to later become a fully fledged professional theatre.
The first song festival had an immense effect on the populus. Over the entire country, especially in the counties of Tartumaa and Võrumaa, new choirs and orchestras were established. A new type of societies appeared, põllumeeste seltsid or farmer´s societies, which would strive to protect the interests of the Estonian farmers and promote newer agricultural methods. There had been such societies before, but they had been entirely centred on the interests of the Baltic-German manor owners. In 1870, the state also gave permission to establish the Aleksandrikool and a committee for the establishment of the school was created, led by Hurt. Sets of local committees were established in parishes across the country, with the aim of introducing the idea to the people and collecting donations for the establishment. To gather donations, those local committees would organise different events, like theatre plays and exhibitions.
The number of highly educated Estonians increased quite a bit in the second half of the 19th century. From the spring of 1870 onwards, the few Estonian students at the University of Tartu would start to meet up to discuss different matters, both scientific as well as national. In 1873 it was registered as a proper organisation and would later become something even more significant (but more on that in the next chapter).
In 1872, the Eesti Kirjameeste Selts (Society of Estonian Literati) was founded in Tartu, chaired by, you guessed it, Jakob Hurt. It mostly dealt with publishing Estonian books and advancing the science of linguistics and folklore. Amongst other books, they published 55 new school textbooks. The society was the first public forum, where scientific matters were discussed not in German, but Estonian.
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