The Estonian absurd

Unlike Latvians, who share their smiles sparingly, Estonians really like absurd humor.

After crossing the Latvian-Estonian border, a crowd of strange creatures make you stop at the edge of the village of Lilli. The various gnomes, dwarfs and ghosts were probably driven across the border by rational Latvian thinking, and then they had a rest on the edge of the first garden, sniffing lung-expanding portions from the magical-absurd Estonian air. You can see here forest and water elves, banana monsters and walking demons, one of which even carries a witch’s house on its head. Even a child’s little plastic motorbike has been incorporated into one of the figures, molded from concrete and then painted. This is the first show we enjoy of unbridled Estonian imagination and creativity.

Arriving in the small town of Viljandi, we see cats everywhere on the side of the road. They are also made of concrete, and their purpose is both to increase the fun and to prevent unwanted parking.

Following the cats, we reach the pride of Viljandi, the Museum of Naive Painters. It was actually the residence and studio of only one local naive painter, Paul Kondas (1900-1985). The latter has been preserved furnished, with his paintings on the walls. In the middle of them, facing the entrance, hangs his self-portrait, which is so similar to Ceaușescu that I suggested on FB that perhaps the Conducător did not die, but hid here after the fall of his regime as an Estonian naive folk painter. But I overestimated my readers, many of whom took the suggestion seriously, so I will not push it any forward here.

In addition to local Estonian myths, Kondas was interested in several other mythical and absurd topics, especially space travel and demons.

If you look at the pictures alone, you can see in them the evidence of the private mythology of a depraved mind. But the situation is more complicated than that. The nurses – I mean the young ladies in charge of the museum – turn on a ten-minute film in which a friend of Kondas analyzes his most important paintings. The analyst is also a phenomenon, with a funny goatee, a flattering voice in which he convincingly spouts the most absurd things, while, next to the analyzed pictures, we also see him sometimes dressed in cheerful colorful shirts, standing in the doorways of Estonian wooden huts, with palm trees made of paper on either side. These ten minutes convince us that we were wrong. The museum is the product of the private mythology of two depraved minds, one of whom, through his qualifications and professional jargon, managed to convince the local authorities that the other was a great artist to be taken seriously, and the whole of Viljandi has been saying so ever since.

The film is only in Estonian, and although my Finno-Ugric mother tongue of course immediately enables me to understand it, nevertheless the few-page English excerpt that the nurses give us before the film is of a great help in understanding the subtleties. I will quote a few sentences from it to each image.

Strawberry Eaters (1965) “Fifteen years after completing the painting, Kondas felt that the strawberry eaters’ eyes had been executed in a very «primitive technique» and needed urgent repair. As a result, the men’s and women’s eyes became maddened, ideally suited to reflect the fears of marriage.”

In Taara’s Holy Grove (1957) “The topic of Kondas and religion is a fascinating one. It can be said that he did not like anything ready-made and did not believe in the church as an institution. This painting was displayed with two other works by Kondas in the Viljandi Museum in 1960. The local newspaper Tee Kommunismile (Road to Communism) published a review which said: «Unfortunately, there were some works at the exhibition, which had been copied from old-fashioned picture postcards». The artist was deeply insulted by the comment, and this remained the only time in Kondas’ lifetime that his works were publicly displayed in his home town.”

Life (1960) “Clearly recognisable in the painting conducting the funeral service is Georg Rosenberg, the pastor of Suure-Jaani, with whom Kondas did not have a good relationship.”

U.N.! (1960) “This painting acknowledges the perennial problem of inherent animosity between the members of the United Nations. In the painting, the so-called primitive peoples are fighting against the world’s most prosperous countries. Kondas managed to turn the theme of pointless warfare exhausting the globe into grotesque.”

The Encounter (1966) “This painting is an irony of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s maize cultivation policy. Kondas painted the maize people, or Russians, on an impossible mission on the Moon. It soon becomes clear that maize does not grow on the Moon. As a result, they are weak from hunger and apparently have also eaten their clothes. Fortunately, a US space rocket lands on the Moon, and the Russians greet them as lifesavers.

Santa Claus fishing (1981) “This is Paul Kondas’ last autobiographical work summarising his life and work. Santa Claus was one of the few positive characters to him, a ritual figure associated with expectation and sharing. He does not expect much, does his job and leaves, but hopefully returns next year.”

Thanks to the effective laudation, not only did Kondas’ studio survive, but the rest of the premises are also used as exhibition halls for the works of other naive artists – painters, concrete sculptores, concept artists, trash house builders and others –, a perfect illustration of “one fool makes many”.

But Estonian humor does not end with the museum. Entering the neighboring café, we see a multitude of coffee mugs on the wall by local artist Raivo Loit which directly continue the psychedelic line of Kondas.

And when leaving the café, a group of half-naked street warriors with sculpted bodies march past us in a tough, patriotic manner. The grotesque thing is that many of them use crutches or wheelchairs. The town’s water tower floats above them like a house on duck legs.

As I write this in the garden suburb of Tartu, in the former Jewish quarter, looking out the window of a hundred-year-old wooden house, I see a burly man of about eighty years coming shuffling down the street in a pair of underpants, holding a Coop bag full of goods in his hand. While I think about how he went to the Coop in a mere pair of underpants, walked through the supermarket, sorted the goods and put them in his basket, paid at the cash, and everyone took this for normal, I see him again shuffling back, now with an empty Coop bag.

It’s not exactly precise to say that Estonians love absurd humor. In Estonia, absurd is the clef of life, and even a foreigner will learn to read life in this clef in a day or two.

I would like to read an Estonian art history handbook. I am sure that Bosch’s paintings are classified as realism.

Church island on the Daugava

It all began here. Here the outside world pierced the ice above the Baltic tribes’ timelessly flowing life, and from the dimness impenetrable to us, they emerged like bustling fish into the light of our history.

Here, on the banks of the Daugava River, the first Christian missionary in the Baltics, the Augustinian monk Meinhard of Holstein, met the pagan Livonians, our Finno-Ugric language relatives. Meinhard first heard about the pagan tribes of the Baltics from fur traders in Lübeck, and felt a calling to convert them. With the permission of his superior, he set off on a journey alone, and following the traders’ guidance, he reached the Livonians living in the village of Ikšķilā sometimes in the late 1170s. Some of the locals were inclined to the new faith, especially when Meinhard promised that if they become Christians, he would build them a fortress to protect them from attacks by hostile pagan tribes, especially the Lithuanians.

German masons called from Gotland built the castle in 1884, and the first church in the Baltics on a hilltop next to it. The fortress soon lost its importance when, in 1201, Meinhard’s successor, Bishop Albert, founded Riga on a better situated site nearby, and moved his seat there. Today, only a memorial stone stands on its site. The church, however, which was later rebuilt in the Gothic style, stood intact until September 1, 1917, when the Russian army defending Riga trenched in around it, and the German attackers shot the church into ruins. It was never rebuilt again.

The exterior and interior of the church before 1917

The Riga Dam, built in 1974, raised the level of the Daugava River so much that the hilltop became an island. The preserved ruins of the church still stand on it today, next to a memorial stone erected in 1864 by the Baron of Üxküll – because this was the German name for the village –, Boris (1793-1870), a heroic Russian officer in the Napoleonic Wars and the abductor of many women’s hearts, who summarized his exploits in his diary published under the title Arms and the Woman.

The German name may be familiar to some. The Barons of Üxküll included the biologist and philosopher Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), the founder of ethology, whom Konrad Lorenz often refers to. He was born in Tallinn, where his father was mayor, and moved permanently to Germany in 1924.

As we head inland from Riga, we definitely stop at this source of Baltic history. It is summer, the reservoir has dried up, and at this time a small path rises from the water, where you can walk across from the shore to the island. On both sides of it there are the stumps of old trees that have been cut down. The trees may have originally lined the path leading to the church, and they may have been cut down when the reservoir was filled.

Along the slightly curved path, the water of the river has remained in small ponds, covered by water lilies. Where the ponds have also dried up, dry blocks of river mussels cover the ground. Sometimes the pits are still wet, and a strong smell of decay emanates from them. Waterfowl flock everywhere to the shallow water of the reservoir in search of food. On the shore, one or two old fishermen are collecting easy prey.

The ruins of the church, built of irregular limestone, are covered with a tin roof. The double Gothic gate seems to have survived, as well as the pointed arch leading from the forecourt into the nave, with Gothic consoles and vault ribs behind it. The rest is gone. The remains are stabilized by red brick additions.

A path, haphazardly trodden through the knee-high vegetation, leads to the memorial stone, on both side of which is a worn Latin inscription. The side facing the shore – the arriving visitors – is barely legible:

IN MEMORIAM MEINARDI EPISCOPI LIVONUM APOSTOLI HUJUS ECCLESIAE FUNDATORIS ATQUE CONRADI MEINDORPI MILITIS YKESKOLA FORTISSIMI FIDEI PROPUGNATORI

In memory of Bishop Meinhard, Apostle of the Livonians, founder of this church and of Conrad Meindorp, Knight of Ykeskola, the brave defender of faith

Konrad Meindorp (later spelled Meyerdorff), as the term propugnator, “protector with a shield” shows, belonged to the generation that Bishop Albert called as crusaders from the late 1190s to Livonia, the new province that included the later Latvia and Estonia, to protect the already converted Baltic people from the unconverted, and the latter from their own pagan faith. In 1201, Konrad Meindorp received the fortress of Ikšķilā – in Latin Ykeskola, in German Üxküll, in later Latvian Ikšķile –, and thus became the ancestor of the von Uexkülls.

On the other side, the offspring says thanks:

HOC MONUMENTUM DEDICAVIT BORIS DE ÜXKÜLL LIBER BARO EQUESTRI IN ESTONIA ORDINI ADSCRIPTUS VIGGALIA IN MARITIMA HERES 1186 1201 1864

This monument was dedicated by Baron Boris von Uexküll, member of the order of knights in Estonia, heir of Vigāles at the sea 1186 1201 1864

The inscription is still clearly legible in the photograph taken before 1917. The church still stands behind it. The members of the apparently middle-class society no not yet know that they will die a violent death back home or will be killed by homesickness in emigration.

Today, neither the church nor the fortress stand. The Baltic Germans were sent to Germany by Hitler’s order in 1940, before Stalin annexed the Baltic states under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and exterminated a quarter to a third of their population. Of the Livonians there are perhaps 180 left in coastal fishing villages, and barely a fifth of them speak the Finno-Ugric language of their ancestors. Only this ruin stands here on a hilltop that has become an island, testifying to the determination of a single man who came here, into the unknown, to change history.

We continue inland, towards the still standing Crusader castles and the Estonian border. As we drive along the main street, the soaring apse of a modern church appears at the western end of the village.

We turn in. On the street named after Bishop Meinhard, there is a Carmelite monastery. The inscription on its door says that it was founded by the German Bonifatiuswerk, which supports the Scandinavian and Baltic Catholic diasporas.

We ring the bell. A cheerful, petite, middle-aged nun in white opens the door, and greets us in the name of Jesus in Latvian. I reply in Latin, then switch to German. She is very happy about this: “If you also speak German, you are doubly at home”, she says.

“We wold like to visit the church.” She introduces us, while I ask questions. The monastery was founded at the invitation of the Latvian government, who specifically wanted to establish a Catholic contemplative order in the country. They came to Ikšķile because they found a land here, but they were very happy to be able to settle in the cradle of Latvian Christianity. There are now eight sisters, from Essen. “How are your relations with the Lutheran majority in Latvia?” “Very good. Ecumenism is very strong in Latvia. The Lutheran bishop really likes us.” But now the Catholic bishop of Riga is visiting them, so she hurries back to the dining room. She shows us which door we will close behind us.

The church is a very clean, functional concrete and glass building, with a semicircular apse at one end and the sisters’ isolated chapel at the other, opening from the cloister.

Both the apse and the chapel have a beautiful medieval German wooden statue, obviously copies. The third figurative ornament is the neo-Romanesque relief depicting Bishop Meinhard on the lectern. The fourth one is outside, on the outer wall of the church: the Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus in the beautiful garden around the apse. This is also an island, an island of peace opposite of Meinhard’s church island.