August Rei

August Rei (born March 10 ^{. Jul} / 22. March  1886 ^greg. In Pilistvere , community Kõo , Viljandi County ; † 29. March 1963 in Stockholm ) was an Estonian lawyer, diplomat and politician. He was head of state of the Republic of Estonia from 1928 to 1929 .

Early years

August Rei attended high school in Tartu and Novgorod . From 1904/1905 and from 1907 to 1911 he studied law at the University of Saint Petersburg . In 1905 he took part in the Russian Revolution and was a journalist for the social democratic movement in the Tsarist Empire. In 1906 he illegally published the social democratic organ Sotsiaaldemokraat in Tallinn .

In 1912/13 Rei did his military service in the Russian army. From 1913 to 1914 he worked as a lawyer in Viljandi . During the First World War he served as an artillery officer in the fortress of Saint Petersburg from 1914 to 1917 .

Political career

With the proclamation of the Republic of Estonia on February 24, 1918, August Rei found himself involved in active politics. In 1918/1919 he was Labor and Social Affairs Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in the Provisional Government of Estonia. In 1919/1920 he was president of the constituent assembly that drafted the first constitution of the Republic of Estonia. After that he was almost continuously a member of the Estonian Parliament ( Riigikogu ). 1925/1926 August Rei took up the post of President of Parliament. 1927/28 he was editor-in-chief of the Estonian newspaper Rahva Sõna ("Voice of the People").

1928/1929 he was the state elder and thus head of state of the Republic of Estonia. In 1932/1933 Rei held the office of Estonian Foreign Minister. From 1938 to 1940 he was the Estonian envoy to the Soviet Union .

August Rei also worked as a lawyer. In 1932 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Law Faculty of Tartu University .

exile

When Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union, August Rei managed to escape to Sweden in 1940 . In 1944, Rei was Foreign Minister of Prime Minister Otto Tief's Estonian government . From 1945 until his death in 1963 he was Prime Minister of the Estonian government in exile with the duties of President. He died in exile in Sweden. On June 21, 2006 the remains of August Rei were exhumed in Stockholm's Bromma Cemetery and transferred to Estonia. There he was buried on August 27, 2006 at the side of his wife Therese in the forest cemetery in Tallinn .

literature

• August Rei , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 33/1963 of August 5, 1963, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of the article freely available)

Web links

• Biography of the Estonian Presidential Office
• Life and Work , website of the Estonian State Chancellery (Estonian and English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Entry in the baptismal register of the parish Pillistfer (Estonian: Pilistvere kogudus)