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Free at last: Estonia's cultural spree
New cultural capital: Tallinn, Estonia
Patrick D. Hazard
A funny thing happened on my recent week in Tallinn, Estonia: When I visited its Architecture Museum (marvelously contrived from an abandoned salt factory), the well-informed young librarian couldn't wait to show me the proceedings of a celebration on the centennial of the architect Louis Kahn. And that was before I told him I was from Philadelphia or that I had lived in a Kahn house for the last 50 years.
Actually, this Kahnolatry repeated itself the next day when my wife and I visited Tallinn's Outdoor Museum (a collection of farmhouses from several centuries that brilliantly reveals how the "enslaved" Estonians mastered their art of thriving in a not too munificent land.) We were watching a University of Tallinn art class interpret the glorious windmill, the museum's prime object on display.
I asked an older woman (who appeared to be the museum's professor) how the Tallinn cultural community was measuring up to the challenge of serving as Europe's cultural capital next year. (Estonia will also adopt the Euro as its currency, the first of the so-called Baltic Republics to do so.) Before I could say "Louie," she too wanted to exude praise of "our" Philly icon!
Both "informers" wanted to know if I knew Kahn was born in Estonia. At which point I repeated my rote bio of the tyke who left his Baltic island at age four and proceeded to unreel my potted vita, not excluding my program on Kahn over WFIL-TV's "University of the Air" in 1959. On that occasion Kahn got so carried away by his design of the library for the then-forthcoming Salk Center for Biological Sciences in La Jolla, Calif.— where humanists and scientists would share ideas— that he disappeared from camera range. It's the only time I ever ordered a genius to sit down!
Both Estonians were beguiled by my anecdote. But their mania made me speculate about the reasons for their adoration.
Succession of overlords
Gradually, I got it. Estonians have been so downtrodden that they've devised a style of self-enhancement that was unique in my historical experience. After the Baltic Crusades of the 13th Century, the Pope granted a German order of Crusading Knights the "right" to settle down in Estonia as overlords to the then-illiterate local serfs. The Crusaders were followed by Swedes, Danes, "Baltic Germans," Russians under Peter the Great, Nazis, Communists— until Estonians finally took over their own governance belatedly in the past two decades.
Take their double-decker Off/On Tallinn bus tours to get the elementary facts. Here is their National Library, with more books per capita than any other such facility. And there's the old Communist Party headquarters on Lenin Square that's now Estonia's foreign affairs department. And no more Vladimir! It's Iceland Square now"“named for the first country to accept Estonia's independence.
Along the waterfront we were told that the handsomely abstract aluminum memorial was created to honor the Estonian who died there experimenting with parachutes, both for his bravery and "exertion," both very Estonian traits. And I've never seen so many museums—more than 30 in Tallinn's urban handbook. You could spend the whole Cultural Capital Year assimilating Tallinn's treasures. This in a city of barely 400,000.
Soviet women, Estonian eggheads
Two of these are not to be missed: the Architecture Museum and the Kumu. The latter is short (and cute) for Kunst Museum, the proudest addition to Tallinn's skyline. The Kumu proved to me once again that our parochial concentration on a Paris/London/Berlin/New York art axis is stuntingly parochial. An exhibition on "Soviet Women," for example, revealed the tension between the official Communist line and the fact that Estonian eggheads (as well as their followers) knew better.
But the best of all is the Architecture Museum, due I'm sure to the brilliance of its director, Karin Halles-Murula. You can't do better than to buy (at the Kumu) her new book, Tallinn Architecture: 1900-2010. It's the most intelligent popular guide to a city's architecture I've yet savored.
Don't miss her analyses of Jacques Rosenbaum's Art Nouveau apartments. She has written a splendid book on him, including an English-language gloss that gets into a subject I'd entirely missed in my enthusiasm over Jugendstil, the new wave of European art and architecture that peaked in 1900: the anti-Semitism of some resistance to the new movement. The instigator of Jugendstil, the Paris gallery owner Siegfried Bing, was Jewish, as were many of its leading figures, and they were met with underground growling.
The Internet works swell in Tallinn. And the Weekly Baltic Times— free both in hotels and on the net— is a good place to orient yourself to Old Town hotels and restaurants.
Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn: the Baltic Trinity. Cross that space off my global map. And go in the summer. Much warmer, the days are longer, and the outdoor restaurants are a gas.♦
To read a response, click here.
Actually, this Kahnolatry repeated itself the next day when my wife and I visited Tallinn's Outdoor Museum (a collection of farmhouses from several centuries that brilliantly reveals how the "enslaved" Estonians mastered their art of thriving in a not too munificent land.) We were watching a University of Tallinn art class interpret the glorious windmill, the museum's prime object on display.
I asked an older woman (who appeared to be the museum's professor) how the Tallinn cultural community was measuring up to the challenge of serving as Europe's cultural capital next year. (Estonia will also adopt the Euro as its currency, the first of the so-called Baltic Republics to do so.) Before I could say "Louie," she too wanted to exude praise of "our" Philly icon!
Both "informers" wanted to know if I knew Kahn was born in Estonia. At which point I repeated my rote bio of the tyke who left his Baltic island at age four and proceeded to unreel my potted vita, not excluding my program on Kahn over WFIL-TV's "University of the Air" in 1959. On that occasion Kahn got so carried away by his design of the library for the then-forthcoming Salk Center for Biological Sciences in La Jolla, Calif.— where humanists and scientists would share ideas— that he disappeared from camera range. It's the only time I ever ordered a genius to sit down!
Both Estonians were beguiled by my anecdote. But their mania made me speculate about the reasons for their adoration.
Succession of overlords
Gradually, I got it. Estonians have been so downtrodden that they've devised a style of self-enhancement that was unique in my historical experience. After the Baltic Crusades of the 13th Century, the Pope granted a German order of Crusading Knights the "right" to settle down in Estonia as overlords to the then-illiterate local serfs. The Crusaders were followed by Swedes, Danes, "Baltic Germans," Russians under Peter the Great, Nazis, Communists— until Estonians finally took over their own governance belatedly in the past two decades.
Take their double-decker Off/On Tallinn bus tours to get the elementary facts. Here is their National Library, with more books per capita than any other such facility. And there's the old Communist Party headquarters on Lenin Square that's now Estonia's foreign affairs department. And no more Vladimir! It's Iceland Square now"“named for the first country to accept Estonia's independence.
Along the waterfront we were told that the handsomely abstract aluminum memorial was created to honor the Estonian who died there experimenting with parachutes, both for his bravery and "exertion," both very Estonian traits. And I've never seen so many museums—more than 30 in Tallinn's urban handbook. You could spend the whole Cultural Capital Year assimilating Tallinn's treasures. This in a city of barely 400,000.
Soviet women, Estonian eggheads
Two of these are not to be missed: the Architecture Museum and the Kumu. The latter is short (and cute) for Kunst Museum, the proudest addition to Tallinn's skyline. The Kumu proved to me once again that our parochial concentration on a Paris/London/Berlin/New York art axis is stuntingly parochial. An exhibition on "Soviet Women," for example, revealed the tension between the official Communist line and the fact that Estonian eggheads (as well as their followers) knew better.
But the best of all is the Architecture Museum, due I'm sure to the brilliance of its director, Karin Halles-Murula. You can't do better than to buy (at the Kumu) her new book, Tallinn Architecture: 1900-2010. It's the most intelligent popular guide to a city's architecture I've yet savored.
Don't miss her analyses of Jacques Rosenbaum's Art Nouveau apartments. She has written a splendid book on him, including an English-language gloss that gets into a subject I'd entirely missed in my enthusiasm over Jugendstil, the new wave of European art and architecture that peaked in 1900: the anti-Semitism of some resistance to the new movement. The instigator of Jugendstil, the Paris gallery owner Siegfried Bing, was Jewish, as were many of its leading figures, and they were met with underground growling.
The Internet works swell in Tallinn. And the Weekly Baltic Times— free both in hotels and on the net— is a good place to orient yourself to Old Town hotels and restaurants.
Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn: the Baltic Trinity. Cross that space off my global map. And go in the summer. Much warmer, the days are longer, and the outdoor restaurants are a gas.♦
To read a response, click here.
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