Friedrich Reinhold
Kreutzwald ( at the Jõepere Manor in Kadrina
, Lääne-Viru County — in Tartu
) was an
Estonian
writer and physician who is considered to be the father of
Estonia's national literature.
Life
Friedrich's parents were
serfs. His father
worked as a
shoemaker.
After the liberation
of 1815, the family was able to send their son to school at the
Rakvere
district school. In 1820, he graduated
from secondary school in Tallinn
and worked
as an elementary school teacher.
In 1833,
Kreutzwald graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of
Tartu
and he married Marie Elisabeth Saedler on August 18 of the same year. From 1833 to 1877, he
worked as the town physician in Võru
,
Estonia. He was the member of numerous
scientific societies in
Europe and received
honorary
doctorates from many
universities.
Writings
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, "Wise Men of Gotham" 1857. In addition to these works, he
wrote many
national epics based on
traditional
Estonian folklore,
"The
Kalevipoeg" ('Kalev's Son')
published "The Old Estonian Fairy-Tales" (1866), collections of
verses and 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 in Estonia,
as well as a paragon and encourager of younger generations of
Estonian-speaking
intellectuals.