The image of the Baltic German elites in twentieth-century Estonian historiography: The 1930s vs. the 1970s

Abstract

professional historians, has a relatively short history. In this strict sense it extends no further back than the first period of Estonian independence during the two inter-war decades. To be sure, writing about Estonian history in Estonian - and produced by individuals who identified themselves as Estonians - began to appear by the national awakening of the 1 860s, but it remained the work of amateur historians who lacked professional training. quality of these writings certainly improved from the time of Jakob Hurt in the 1 860s and 1 870s to that of Villem Reiman in the early twentieth century, but they are most appropriately seen as the prologue to the more substantial historiography of the post-World War I era. Tartu (Dorpat) University, already established in 1632 during the period of Swedish rule in Estonia, was a distinguished institution of higher learning, but the study of Estonian language and culture had virtually no place there before 1919. In the nineteenth century, instruction was in German until the 1890s and then in Russian until the end of the tsarist regime. study of Estonian was only supported by a low-level lectureship, and all attempts to establish one or more professorships in Estonian studies were turned back by the university or tsarist authorities (Raun, The Role 140-41). During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the professional investigation of the past in Estonia was dominated by Baltic German historians, much of whose work was at a high level when judged by the standards of the time, but whose output focused rather narrowly on the historical role of the Baltic German elites (Liiv, Eesti ajaloouurimise 300). As the end of the twentieth century approaches, it seems appropriate to assess the evolution of Estonian historiography during the past seven or eight decades, especially since it is a topic that has not been studied in sufficient depth to date.1 It is certainly not coincidental that the writing of history in Estonia during this century has mirrored the shifting political tides that the country has been subject to, i.e., two initial decades of independence, followed by war and occupation, full-blown Stalinism, a post-Stalin thaw with strong ideological controls still in place, and finally the restoration of independence in the 1990s. Thus, one finds a considerable amount of discontinuity and fragmentation in JBS, Vol XXX, No 4 (Winter 1999) 338