by Jaan Einasto
2.2.2 My roots
Both my parents’ roots are in South Estonia.
My father came from a family in the Southern part of Tartu county near the lake “Pühajärv” (Holy Lake in Estonian). The grandfather Jüri Grossberg of my grandmother Minna participated in 1841 in a revolt against a local baron, known in Estonian history as the “Pühajärve war”. It was suppressed by the tsar’s army and major participants were punished by gauntlet near an old oak at the lake Pühajärv. Jüri Grossberg survived but was very ill thereafter. My grandmother Minna Grossberg was born in a farm called Türgi. Her sister Marie Koppel was the editor of the daily newspaper ‘Olevik’ until 1905, when the newspaper was closed by Russian authorities — the first woman in Estonia to work as an editor of a political newspaper. Minna’s daughter and my aunt Leida owned the Türgi farm after World War I. She died in 1937 and left the farm to her son Jüri, who was 15 at the time. Jüri with the help of grandmother Minna and his two sisters, Liis and Eva Maaring, was able to keep Türgi farm in good shape. During World War II two of my younger brothers, Rein and Peeter, and I spent all summers in Türgi, helping and learning farming.
My grandfather Karl Eisenschmidt was a son of a nearby farmer too. The family name “Eisenschmidt” is a German translation of the name of the farm “Raudsepa” near the Southern edge of the lake Pühajärv. Family names of Estonian peasants were given by German landowners at the end of the 18th century. Mostly the name comes from the name of the farm they lived in. As names were given by Germans, often the farm name was translated into German. Local people even in the middle of the 20th century called themselves according to the farm they lived. Thus, when I lived in the 1940’s in Türgi farm, I was called “Türgi Jaan”.
Karl Eisenschmidt married my grandmother Minna in 1891. The first job of the family was lessees of a farm; thereafter Karl served as the secretary of the local parish. Before WW I the family moved to Tartu where their daughter Leida worked in a bank and had a free apartment from the bank. In these years Karl was a journalist, and he wrote articles on the life of farmers as well as reviews on farming. In his articles he was rather critical towards local estate owners (barons of Baltic-German origin). Thus during the German occupation in 1918 he had to hide himself to avoid arrest. After the death of Minna’s father he together with Minna went to Türgi to keep the farm.
My father Elmar got his education in Tartu Teachers Seminar. Thereafter he was a teacher in a school, which was moved in 1917 to Siberia’s Altai region. After the Estonian War of Independence he was able to return to Estonia in 1921, and soon became the director of a girl’s school in Tartu. He was a very good teacher, and worked in this school until his retirement. He was interested in geography and participated in the preparation of a series of monographs on Estonian counties. During one of research trips he visited Egeri farm and become acquainted with the daughter of the owner of the farm, Eva Lammas. They married on June 24 (Jaan-Day) 1927. I was their first son. Thereafter almost every few years new children were born, so I have brothers Vello, Mart, Rein, Peeter and Andres, and sisters Tiina and Kersti.
My great-grandfather from my mother’s line, Wiilip Lammas, bought a farm Egeri not far from the Latvian area of Livonia (at this time Southern Estonia and Northern Latvia formed one Livonian governorate in the Russian Empire). He gave to his first son, my grandfather Jaan, a very good education. For several years Jaan was a guest of a local German family who had hired a private teacher. The family was German-speaking, so soon Jaan was fluent in German. Next Jaan studied in a Latvian school to learn Latvian. Later during the Russification period he learned Russian, so he was fluent in all four local languages. First he was a teacher in a local school, but soon took over the main duties of farming Egeri.
Fig. 2.2 Pühajärve “war-oak” —under this oak 1841 Estonian farmers were punished by gauntlet. The grandfather Jüri Grossberg of my grandmother Minna also was punished by 500 beats. In this picture our family was celebrating the 100th birthday of our grandmother Minna, and we visited places of interest to our family history (author’s photo).
In 1879 Jaan Lammas participated in the Second National Singing Festival in Tartu, and acquainted himself with leaders of the Estonian national awakening movement. The goal of the movement was to acknowledge Estonia as a nation deserving of the right to govern itself. The result of the visit to Singing Festival was that Jaan divided his life both to farming and social activity. He applied new methods of farming, experimented with modern tools, and started to write articles in Estonian, Latvian, Russian and German journals and newspapers on farming. Also he translated papers of cultural interest from Latvian newspapers and journals into Estonian and vice versa. For some time he was the head of the local parish, and served as organist in a local church. In social life he was the founder or cofounder of societies on farming, singing, banking etc. Such initiative from the people was very important in preparing the whole society for an independent country, and helped to win the Independence War against Bolshevik Russia.
The social activity brought Jaan close to the main centre of the awakening movement in Viljandi, where he met his future wife Anna Wiegant. Anna was born in a family of local glassmaster of German origin. Her mother died after the birth, and Anna was adopted by Lilli Suburg, one of the leaders of the Estonian awakening movement. Suburg founded a private girl school in Viljandi, as well as the first Estonian journal for families and women, “Linda”. She was active as a journalist and writer, and was the initiator of the Estonian women’s rights movement. Anna started to help Lilli as a teacher when she was only 13 years old. Later, during the Russification period, Anna became director of the school as Lilli was not fluent in Russian. The main goal of the school was to cultivate educated Estonian women as creators and holders of families and self-governing citizens.
At the end of the 19th Century the school was closed due to economic difficulties. In 1899 Anna and Jaan married, and moved together with Lilli Suburg to Egeri. Here Lilli and Anna continued to teach children until the birth of Eva, my mother, in 1907. In 1928 Jaan Lammas died, and Anna moved to Tartu to my parent’s family, where she lived until her death in 1937. The farming of Egeri was given to lessees. When the Soviet occupation started, my mother was clever enough to give Egeri away to the state. In this way our family was not deported to Siberia as most other owners of big farms in the region.
My parents and grandparents liked music. My mother writes in her memoirs that on Sunday mornings she was awakened by quiet piano music played by her mother Anna, or by organ music played by her father Jaan. In our house in Tartu we also had a piano, and both my mother and father often used it. We had a very large collection of notes, mostly organ music, collected by grandfather Jaan.
Our family lived in Tartu where my father was a teacher and school director. In the 1930’s Estonian government started a campaign to change German names to Estonian ones. So our family name was also changed. My father was a real patriot of Estonia, so he invented the name “Einasto”, which is a permutation of “Estonia”. The name was patented, so nobody else can have this name. In this respect our family name is unique.
In 1937 our parents built a private house near the border of Tartu. The architecture of the house is rather modern, and the house is registered as of cultural importance. In this house I lived for 25 years, including the first ten years when I was married to Liia. Due to the work by Jaan Lammas and Lilli Suburg the Egeri farm is also in the list of objects of cultural importance.
After retirement my father and his sister Erika became interested in our family history and started to search in parochial registers. They were able to reconstruct our family history up to the Great Northern War — older archives and registers were destroyed during the war. Now almost all these registers are scanned and can be accessed via internet. One of my relatives, the husband of my niece, is an active member of the Estonian Genealogical Society, and helped to reconstruct our family history using data presently available. He confirmed mo
st findings of my father and aunt, and generated family trees for my 80th birthday, see the website accompanying this book.
Most recently the genealogy can be reconstructed using the website at Geni.com. Using data available at Geni.com I found that the grandmother of my grandmother Anna was of noble origin. For noble families the genealogical tree can be restored for a much longer period than for peasants, thus through this line my ancestors are much better known. If all ancestors were not related to each other, then the number of ancestors of the nth generation would be 2n. In this case for large enough n the number of ancestors would be larger than the population of all mankind. Actually many ancestors are relatives, and the number of ancestors grows much more slowly. This effect is well-known in the genealogy; German scientists call it “Ahnenverlust”. This is especially valid for small communities where almost everyone are relatives of people from the same community.
People from noble families had a tradition of taking wives also from noble families, thus, step-by-step I found that many Baltic German noble families are my relatives, and some are my direct ancestors. These lines go back to the conquest of Estonia and Latvia by the Livonian Brothers in the 13th century, and through them to noble families of the whole of Northern Europe. In this way I discovered that Rurik of Svealand, the Prince of Novgorod and the founder of the Russian State, is my 28th great grandfather. Further lines go to the antique world: Augustus Caesar, the first Roman Emperor, is my 56th great grandfather; Philip II, King of Macedonia and father of Alexander the Great, is my 64th great grandfather. Geni.com data indicate that my most distant known ancestor lines go back over kings of Armenia, Babylon and Persia to Egypt: my 124th great grandfather was Ro, a Predynastic pharaoh of ancient Egypt (circa 3250 BC).
Actually this long known family tree is not a surprise: once you happen to have among your ancestors some nobleman, you can go very far, since for these people data on births, deaths and relatives are fixed in various documents. My unwritten family tree goes at least 300 generations back — Estonians are one of the most stable people and have lived on the same territory more than nine thousand years. This is the reason why almost all pieces of the landscape have names — people thought that not only animals but also trees, lakes, and other elements of Nature have souls, and gave them names.
And after all, DNA analyses show that all mankind has one common ancestor, the Mitochondrial Eve, the most recent woman from whom all living humans today descend on their mother’s side. Our First Eve lived around 200,000 years ago, most likely in East Africa. My colleague and friend Richard Villems, director of the Estonian Biocenter, leads a team to study the topology of the human mitochondrial tree and the origin and diversity of modern human populations. In collaboration with teams in different countries Villems has studied the DNA history of Estonians and other nearby nations. He is particularly interested in the early phase of the spread of modern humans from Africa to Eurasia, Australia, and to the New World.
2.2.3 My early life and first steps in astronomy
I grew up in a teacher’s family. We had a large library, and I used this in my school years. First I read Estonian classical authors. In the 1930’s many good series of books were translated into Estonian, so I had the chance to read novels of Nobel prize winners, as well as books on modern history (this series was called “From the Marseillaise to the International”). Also I had the opportunity to read popular books on many natural sciences. During the war I graduated from primary school and entered the Tartu Real Gymnasium.
My interest in astronomy is due to a present from my father for Christmas 1942 — a popular book by Roopi Hallimäe, “Astronomical Observation” (in Estonian). The book was so well written that I started to observe various astronomical phenomena. Quite soon I started to visit Tartu Observatory. One of the first persons I met was Roopi Hallimäe, an enthusiastic observer and poet in his spirit. We became good friends and I learned a lot from him.
My physics teacher Osvald Sulla was a friend of the director of the Observatory, Prof. Taavet Rootsmäe, and introduced me to him. So, in the autumn 1943 Rootsmäe invited me to his lectures on general astronomy. His lectures were very clear, and with some help from textbooks on elements of higher mathematics and spherical trigonometry I was able to follow lectures. There were only two students and me in these lectures. Soon the students disappeared — Germany had made a total mobilisation of young men in Estonia. So I was the only listener, but Rootsmäe continued lecturing as before. After the lecture he invited me to his office, and we had long discussions on the topic, as well as on more general problems. In one of these discussions Ernst Öpik entered the office — this was my first meeting with him.
In the Observatory there were copies of older issues of the Calendars of the Observatory, where popular articles on various astronomical topics were published, as well as summaries of papers published in Tartu Observatory Publications. The most interesting of these papers was the fundamental study by Öpik (1938), where the modern theory of stellar structure and evolution was formulated. Another interesting area was the study of the connection between the kinematics of stellar populations and the mean ages of stars by Rootsmäe. Results of this study were published only posthumously (Rootsmäe, 1961).
In January 1944 the Soviet Army broke the German defence around Leningrad. The frontline stopped at the Narva river, and Estonia became arena of military actions. Schools were closed and it was suggested that pupils go to countryside if possible. My grandmother Minna lived with her grandson Jüri in Türgi farm about 60 km south of Tartu. So I and two of my younger brothers went to Türgi. I brought with me a self-made telescope which had an objective made of eyeglass. With this telescope I continued observations of the Moon, planets and other interesting objects. The winters in the war years were cold and the sky mostly clear, so I had the chance to observe almost every evening.
In August I made preparations to observe the Perseid meteor shower, but then an artillery cannonade from the East signalled the start of a new offensive in Pskov towards Southern Estonia. About a week I observed from the roof of our house the air battles about 15 km South of our farm. The gunfire was heard South of us, and it was very rapidly moving westwards. Then in one day it was very quiet and my grandmother suggested it’s time to begin to harvest rye. We had just started when from North-West several grenades were shot towards us. This was the signal of a German counteroffensive. It was high time to escape. With two horse-carts we left our farm in the early morning, taking with us 4 cows. With cows our movement was slow, and soon it was time to milk cows, so we had a stop not far from our farm.
We had not finished milking when we saw Russian soldiers approaching from South to set up a gun on a nearby hill. The Germans immediately shot at and destroyed the gun. And then a bitter gun- and mine-fire started, and we were just in the middle between two attacking armies. Several grenades came very close to us, and one cow was wounded, but we were unharmed. In the evening it became quieter and we thought where to hide. But then a Russian officer came and gave an order — to come with our horse-cart and evacuate a wounded soldier. So one of our carts was unloaded and I accompanied the evacuation. The ambulance was about 10 km to South. There our horse was exchanged for a slightly wounded horse and I could go back. During the night it was not easy to find the place where I left my relatives. Finally I found them, but then the battle started again and a group of Russian soldiers surrounded me. Finally I found the place where our family was hiding — in a deep valley not far away, where numerous other farmers with their families, horses and cows hid.
I had just fallen asleep when a Russian officer came and ordered me to evacuate a wounded soldier. I had to go again. This time not so far. But there I met a farmer who said that he had been there already several days without any food and hope of going back to the others. Then I thought that it is perhaps better to leave the horse and cart there, and to try to go back to the valley where all of us were hiding. However, this was a wrong decision, and soon I w
as arrested and brought to a command post. I was thoroughly searched, and they found in my pocket a selfmade map of the routes in South Estonia. I had forgotten to put it away, and I was suspected to be a German spy. This unit was probably Smersh — the Soviet counter-intelligence agency during the war. After the first questioning they showed me an open grave and threatened to shoot me if I did not provide evidence of my spying tasks. Fortunately I was not shot immediately. In the following nights I was questioned again and again, I had to tell of my evacuations of wounded soldiers, what my father thinks of the Soviet regime etc. During the questioning I always said what actually happened, because I had nothing to hide.
The Smersh unit moved with the attacking army, and a lot of suspect people were arrested and questioned. Among them were Estonians who had served in the German army, Soviet prisoners of war who had worked in Estonian farms, and randomly picked up people, young and old. After about two weeks they apparently trusted my answers and set me free. But they ordered a young boy to accompany me. The boy told me that he was tasked with informing Smersh what I said when I returned home.
So, at the end of August I was back in our farm. All my relatives were there, and the joy of reunion was unforgettable. I told my story, the boy left next morning, and Smersh did not take any actions against me. Later I learned that usually if you are already in the hands of Smersh (or KGB after the war), they have methods to press out whatever accusations they want. I know many such cases, both among my Estonian friends as well as my colleagues in Soviet observatories. Thus I had been very fortunate.
The area around our farm was a place of fierce battle; several grenades had hit our houses but the damage was not very great. Also several corpses of Soviet soldiers were found, but on my arrival they were buried. The farm about one kilometre West from ours was burned down, there bodies of German soldiers were found. My relatives had been allowed to return home only a few days before my arrival. The farm was occupied by a Russian command-unit. The commander of the unit was a very educated man, he had graduated from the Leningrad conservatory and often played our piano. Under his command almost nothing was stolen by soldiers.
