I Loved a German

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A.H. Tammsaare was born in 1878 into a poor farming family, the fourth of twelve siblings. Serfdom had been abolished in 1861, and his father Peeter was able to buy a farm, though the land was either stony or marshy. If we take as our indicator Vargamäe, the first volume of his monumental pentalogy in which Indrik can be identified with the author, peasant life was slowly improving in that part of the Tsarist Empire. Tammsaare was born Anton Hansen, and added the name of his family’s farm to his own. His father was hardworking, built farm buildings on his land and made furniture and household utensils. He could also read and write, and newspapers were delivered by bicycle during the summer months.

When he wasn’t working, the young Tammsaare would spend his time getting muddy, observing insects and watching birds. This dreaminess was accompanied by an aptitude for study, and the family decided a little late in his teenage years to fund his education and he went to secondary education in Tartu from 1898 to 1903. And from 1903 to 1905, he worked as an editor at the Tallinn newspaper, Teataja. In Tallinn he was able to witness the Russian Revolution of 1905. While many Estonian writers supported it in part as a means for their own emancipation from the empire and German landowners, Tammsaare took a more cautious approach, supporting some of the aims but rejecting violence.

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