Gustav Wulff-Õis

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Gustav Wulff-Õis ( Gustav Wulff , Gustav Öiis , Gustav Õis , * December 20, 1864 July / January 1,  1865 greg. In the rural community of Otepää ; † January 9, 1946 in Nüpli, rural community of Otepää) was an Estonian poet.

life and work

Gustav Wulff received his training from 1880 to 1884 at the teachers' college in Tartu and from 1885 to 1892 he was a teacher at the district school of Puhja in the rural community of Elva . He then worked as a private tutor in Ambla for two years before he was the municipal secretary in Alt-Otepää from 1894 until his retirement in 1937.

His first poetic attempts come from his time in the seminary, where one of his teachers was Mihkel Veske . Later he was in close contact with Juhan Liiv and had dealings with Karl Eduard Sööt and Eduard Vilde . Wulff translated numerous poets from German and Russian (including Lermontow , Puschkin , Eichendorff , Geibel , Goethe , Heine and Lenau ), but wrote an estimated only 70 poems himself and did not publish a single book. He achieved fame through a single poem, Õrn ööbik ('Nightingale tender'), which his fellow student Karl Ramm (1864–1919) set to music as one of the most popular songs of the national emancipation movement in the 19th century.

The farm on which Gustav Wulff-Õis spent the last years of his life is now a branch of the Estonian Museum of Literature and a museum of local history with a permanent exhibition on the poet's life.

Õrn ööbik

The poem with four stanzas was published under the title Ööpikule (today's orthography Ööbikule , 'An die Nachtigall') for the first time in 1883 in the music supplement of the Postimees and is later included under the first two words, Õrn ööbik ('Nachtigall tender'), with which a nightingale is addressed becomes known. In the first verse, the bird is asked where it would like to sing its song, on the farm or in the forest. The following three stanzas are the answer of the nightingale, who declares in the second stanza that she does not want to sing on the farm because the grounds of the farm have been fertilized with her parents' blood. Instead, she wanted to sing in front of the window of the farmhouse. In the third verse, the bird promises to make you forget the hard day's work with his song on the summer night. The fourth and last stanza speaks of dawn, when the dark night disappears, the slave yoke falls and freedom becomes possible for Estonia.

Literature on the author

  • Rudolf Põldmäe: Sada aastat “Õrna ööbiku” autori sünnist, in: Keel ja Kirjandus 1/1965, pp. 39–44.
  • Rudolf Põldmäe: Gustav Wulff-Õis. 'Õrna ööbiku author'. Tartu: Eesti NSV Teaduste Akadeemia, Fr.R. Kreutzwaldi nim. Kirjandusmuuseum 1965. 18 pp.
  • Johannes Kaup: "Õrn ööbiku" kaks loojat, in: Tulimuld 3/1989, pp. 138–141; 4/1989, pp. 212-216; 1/1990, pp. 41-44; 3/1990, pp. 158-159.
  • Oskar Kruus : Veel mõni lause Gustav Wulffist, in: Tulimuld 4/1991, pp. 214-216. (Contains some corrections to the previous article by Kaup in the same magazine.)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eesti kirjanike leksikon. Koostanud Oskar Kruus yes Heino Puhvel. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat 2000, p. 684.
  2. ↑ Johannes Kaup: "Õrn ööbik", in: Tulimuld 1/1990, p. 41.
  3. ↑ Oskar Kruus: Veel Moni lause Gustav Wulffist in: Tulimuld 4/1991, pp 215-216
  4. ^ (Estonian) Homepage of the Gustav Wulff-Õis Museum.
  5. ↑ (Estonian) First publication.
  6. ↑ Complete text in: Sõnarine. Eesti luule antoloogia. 1. köide. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat 1989, p. 217.
personal data
SURNAME Wulff-Õis, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wulff, Gustav; Õis, Gustav; Öiiis, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Estonian poet
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Otepää rural community
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1946
Place of death Nüpli, Otepää rural community