18 K A Hermanni Street (Photo: Robert Varik).

Karl Ristikivi (Estonian Writers Online Dictionary).

A. Hermanni 18

• The residence of the writer Karl Ristikivi.

18 K A Hermanni Street and Karl Ristikivi

The house at 18 K A Hermanni Street was built in 1939. One of the building’s first tenants was the writer, Karl Ristikivi, who lived there until his permanent departure from Estonia in 1943, first to Finland and then to Sweden. He became one of the best-known foreign Estonian writers, and his later creative work and life were entwined with motifs of the life of a refugee.

While Karl Ristikivi remained a state-ordered forgotten writer in the Soviet era, he rose back into the spotlight in Estonia in the late 1980s when foreign Estonian literature and culture could finally be discussed more freely in his native country. The house at 18 K A Hermanni Street was purchased in 1988 by the city of Tartu, with the Karl Ristikivi House Museum being opened there as a branch of the Tartu City Museum. According to the literary scholar, Rutt Hinrikus, the opening of the Ristikivi Museum in Tähtvere was a landmark event: the museum was a sign of a new era, a symbol of the elimination of the list of restricted-access publications and the end of the era of forbidden literature, something which was welcomed warmly on both sides of the Baltic Sea. 

The Ristikivi Museum did not last long, however. Its doors were closed permanently in 2007. After that, the premises were taken care of by the Karl Ristikivi Society which, unfortunately, was forced to give them up in 2023 due to financial difficulties.

The building at 18 K A Hermanni Street was put into good use in the 1990s by the Veljesto Student Society, of which Karl Ristikivi had also been a member since the 1930s. As Veljesto did not have its own property in Tartu at the time, Ristikivi’s former apartment became one of their main meeting spots.

Listen to the memories of former Veljesto members via the archives of Estonian Public Broadcasting (ERR). ‘Keskööprogramm: Veljesto ‒ mälestused ja lootused’ (‘The midnight programme: Veljesto ‒ memories and hopes’).