| The Baltic German culture as a focus of interest in contemporary Estonia |
| liina lukas |
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"Various thoughts emerge in your head when you pass the Baltic German manor houses. What is the culture like behind these walls? What kind of people have they hidden, what isolated life has been created, this seemingly fertile ground for the teaching of the Übermensch? What are they like when communicating with one another, in their own circles, when they do not have to force themselves into the role of the master? What are they like when seen through a monocle and not through a farmhand's window blackened with smoke? Questions!" (1) These questions were asked by Aino Kallas almost a century ago, hoping to find answers in the work of the most prominent Baltic German writer Eduard von Keyserling (1855-1918). Today, Keyserling's name is generally unknown and the manor houses in Estonia hardly raise similar questions. We are used to associating the manor houses with manor schools, museums or concert venues, and not with their former inhabitants and their culture.  Aino Kallas was - maybe partly due to her Finnish origin - one of the few in the early 20th century who posed questions about the manorial culture. In its eager desire for self-determination, the newly independent Estonian culture wanted to rid itself of the reactionary 'Baltic mentality' (2), believing that everything original in the country had come from Estonians and Latvians. (3) The fact that an Estonian always lived on a farm and had no business at the manor was deeply embedded in cultural memory. If he had to go there, it was just to pay his taxes. According to the classics: "We had heard about it since childhood from our mothers and fathers, older brothers and sisters, relatives and friends. God had burdened the parish with all manner of woe and worry, whereas endless feasts went on at the manor. The parish suffered constant deprivation, even hunger, while the manor enjoyed perpetual affluence, wealth, splendour," wrote Anton Hansen Tammsaare. (4) Although it was with clenched fists, people still had to reckon with the manor, a nearby and significant place. After all, most servants at the manor were Estonians. Farmers and their families relied on the manor to learn something about the wide - modern - world. The manor became part of the Estonian identity, part of Estonian culture. In his novel I Loved a German, Tammsaare contemplated the Estonian identity: "We had taken over the manors, and now we hastened to take over their way of life ... We did what we could, in order to adopt, together with the manors, their traditions, customs, way of life, world view, the whole ethical and aesthetic approach to life .... Our heart revolves around the empty abode of our own slave master, as if our conscience were tormenting us." (5) Post-colonial conscience no longer burdens us today, and we can examine the Baltic German culture, which is certainly not only represented by the manor, as one source of the Estonian identity. Integration of the two cultures is not only expressed in the Tallinn Town Hall or Tartu's St John's Church, which we now regard as being among the spatial symbols of Estonian identity, along with the farmer's cottage. "The moss on the bark has largely blended into the tree and become familiar" (6), said Jaan Oks in 1909, referring to Estonian-German cultural relations. German culture had left a strong impact on Estonian culture, and had, in fact, come so close that "the eye could not really see because of the closeness".  Examining the blending of the tree and the moss on its bark, the co-existence of the German and Estonian cultures, their mutual impact and perception, introduces new points of view to both cultural histories, which have so far been described separately. In Baltic German history writing, the history of the Baltic countries has primarily signified the history of reign, i.e. German culture. Estonians, on the other hand, have emphasised the history of folk culture, leaving the German high culture aside. Whenever these two met, 'two moralities' also collided (Estonian and Baltic German), each evaluating the same historical phenomena from its own paradigm. (7) The joint tense history prevented any impartial approach, although already in the 1920s-30s some Estonians suggested that they should "boldly add the results of local German-language culture to the Estonian history of culture", because "why should we voluntarily separate ourselves with 'national' barbed wire from the heritage values of distant times only because their authors were not Estonian by 'blood', language or mentality?"(8) Such an approach was terminated by the arrival of the Soviet occupation, when the Baltic German literature and culture, just like everything else that might refer to Estonian culture belonging to Europe, became a taboo topic. Regaining independence enabled us to examine our cultural heritage without any ideology. The Baltic German culture could now be regarded not as a colonial culture, but as a primary link with European culture. It is symbolic that the Baltic German topic was reintroduced into our cultural consciousness by the manors. A large number of picture albums, tourist guides and academic treatises about the manorial architecture were published (see especially the writings of Jüri Kuuskemaa, Juhan Maiste and Ants Hein). The Estonian manor as an architectural monument was saved from humiliating degradation and from being used as state farm offices, flour storage, stables or tractor repair shops. Historians began to reinterpret the cultural role of the Baltic Germans. Baltic German applied art took its rightful place among the permanent exhibition of Estonian art. Our libraries and archives abound with texts of culture that are waiting to be explored and interpreted from the point of view of Estonian culture. The new interpretation of Baltic German literature and culture owes much to the writings of Jaan Undusk.  Baltic German cultural societies were established both in Tallinn and in Tartu, aiming to examine and introduce the Baltic German cultural heritage and improve relations between the Baltic Germans and cultural organisations. The interest has been mutual, and the Baltic Germans' moral and material help in re-establishing the Estonian state has been remarkable. Today, the role of mediating between Baltic German and Estonian organisations is fulfilled by Domus Dorpatensis (www.dorpatensis.ee), the Foundation for Science and Liberal Arts established with the support of the Baltic Germans. It has organised round-tables to discuss mutual interests and create a common information network. Baltic German literature became an important area for the Goethe Institut in Estonia, which was founded in 1999 and has organised various discussions and conferences, published Jacob Michael Reinhold Lenz's (1751-1792) selected works (2003) and, together with the Under and Tuglas Literary Centre, has arranged international symposia on the relationship between Baltic German and Estonian literatures, (9) with the aim of "introducing geographic (topological, territorial) features, in addition to the existing national identity determinants, into the historical development of today's Estonia." (10) A similar geo-cultural concept is the basis for the digital project of literary history started in 2002 by the Department of Literature and Folk Poetry of Tartu University and the university library - the Digital Text Repository for Older Estonian Literature (EEVA), which sets the history of Estonian literature in its multicultural context, in close connection with literature in other languages in the Baltic region. The interest of wider audiences in Baltic German literature and culture is evident in books of memoirs published in recent years (e.g. by Berndt von Staden, Walter von Wistinghausen, Camilla von Stackelberg, Monica Hunnius, Carl Mothander, Georg Julius von Schultz-Bertram et al) and fiction. (11) These have opened the door of the manorial world, allowing the curious to enter and revive a lost world, which seems alien but at the same time familiar. Or, in the words of Berndt von Staden: "The world has disappeared but its legacy will remain visible and also perceptible. [...] who examines the Gothic churches in Tallinn and the mighty town walls...., who visits the manor houses, be these simple one-storey buildings or castle-like mansions, will encounter the legacy of that lost era, perceiving that the soul once animating them still lives on in this country, in its walls and towers, streets and farms. Much of all that is also in the people of that country, who do not deny to this day the western European perception of life introduced to them primarily by the Baltic Germans." (12)
(1) Aino Kallas. Eduard von Keyserling. Bunte Herzen. Novellen. - Postimees 17. IX 1909, no 212, p. 2. |