Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald
Template:Short description Template:Expand Estonian Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (Template:OldStyleDate – Template:OldStyleDate) was an Estonian writer who is considered to be the father of the national literature for the country. He is the author of Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg.
Life
Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald's parents were serfs<ref>A. Plakans, A Concise History of the Baltic States (2011) p. 210</ref> at the Jömper estate, Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire (in present-day Jõepere, Lääne-Viru County). His father Juhan worked as a shoemaker and granary keeper and his mother Anne was a chambermaid. After liberation from serfdom in 1815, the family was able to send their son to school at the Wesenberg (present-day Rakvere) district school.
In 1820, he graduated from secondary school in Dorpat (present-day Tartu, Tartu County, Estonia) and worked as an elementary school teacher. In 1833, Kreutzwald graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the Imperial University of Dorpat.
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Kreutzwald married Marie Elisabeth Saedler on 18 August the same year. From 1833 to 1877, he worked as the municipal physician in Werro (present-day Võru).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was the member of numerous scientific societies in Europe and received honorary doctorates from a number of universities.
Works
Kreutzwald is the author of several moralistic folk books, most of them translated into German: Plague of Wine 1840, The World and Some Things One Can Find in It 1848–49, Reynard the Fox 1850, and Wise Men of Gotham 1857. In addition to these works, he composed the national epic Kalevipoeg (Kalev's Son),<ref>J. D. Rateliff, The History of the Hobbit (2007) p. 181</ref> using material initially gathered by his friend Friedrich Robert Faehlmann;<ref>T. Miljan ed., Historical Dictionary of Estonia (2004) p. 236</ref> and wrote many other works based on Estonian folklore, such as Old Estonian Fairy-Tales (1866), collections of verses, and the poem Lembitu (1885), published after his death.
Kreutzwald is considered to be the author of the first original Estonian book. He was one of the leaders of the national awakening, as well as a paragon and encourager of young Estonian-speaking intellectuals.
See also
References
External links
- 1803 births
- 1882 deaths
- People from Kadrina Parish
- People from Kreis Wierland
- Physicians from the Russian Empire
- Estonian physicians
- Estonian male poets
- Epic poets
- Collectors of fairy tales
- Estonian folk-song collectors
- 19th-century Estonian painters
- 19th-century Estonian male artists
- 19th-century Estonian poets
- 19th-century musicologists
- 19th-century male writers
- Burials at Raadi cemetery