Heino Mikiver

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heino Mikiver (born August 31, 1924 in Loksa , † February 26, 2004 in Tallinn ) was an Estonian artist and writer .

Life

Heino Mikiver was at the secondary school in Tallinn until 1942 and studied in the academic year 1940-41 at the same time at the Tallinn Music School. At both schools he came into contact with Ilmar Laaban , who later marked the "entry of surrealism into Estonian poetry", which was of importance for his further artistic career.

In 1942 he entered the “Pallas” art school in Tartu. A year later he fled to Finland to avoid being drafted into the Wehrmacht, which Germany had occupied during World War II . There he participated as a volunteer in the Finnish Army in the Continuation War . After his return he fought in Estonia in 1944 against the advancing Soviet army, for which he was sentenced to three years in a labor camp in 1945. However, he was given amnesty shortly afterwards. In 1947 the authorities tried to force him to cooperate with the NKVD , which Mikiver resisted. He preferred to flee across the ice of the Gulf of Finland. However, the Finnish authorities extradited him to the Soviet Union, where he was sentenced to ten years of Siberian forced labor.

After his release in 1955, Mikiver was initially denied the Tallinn branch. It was not until the early 1960s that he obtained his license to study in Tallinn, where he graduated as a painter from the then Estonian Art Institute in 1967 . In the following years he mainly worked as a book illustrator.

The artist Olev Mikiver and the journalist and poet Ilmar Mikiver were his brothers, the actor and theater director Mikk Mikiver was his second cousin. Their common great-grandmother was the folk singer Els Mikiver (1824–1900).

plant

The first literary attempts in the field of absurd theater can be dated to 1946, i.e. before his exile. In Siberia, Mikiver was then active in a jazz orchestra, which saved him the work in the quarries. He worked his way up in the orchestra and ended up being chief conductor. After his return, he devoted himself increasingly to writing absurd theater pieces, the first performances of which were conspiratorially held in the student milieu in the early 1960s. Although Heino Mikiver has no printed texts - apart from a children's book, see below - he can be described as a “pioneer” of the Estonian theater of the absurd. The artist Leonhard Lapin , who was involved in the performances, later recalled: “We also moved across the country and gave guest performances in schools and kolkhozes, always very short pieces with a lot of improvisation. The audience was thrilled. In these cases, too, we played as part of a concert - that was our cover, so to speak. The theater of the absurd was the only way to criticize the Soviet situation, and Mikiver's texts mark the beginning of the theater of the absurd in Estonia. "

To date, 12 plays have been discovered in manuscript form. Mikiver also wrote casual poems and short prose. Often he gave away the texts afterwards, so that there is still no general overview of his largely unprinted work.

Trivia

In 1947, in prison in Leningrad, Mikiver met Jaan Kross , whom he had known from school and had got to know better while studying in Tartu. Since Kross wrote continuously while in detention, Mikiver also began to write poetry.

bibliography

  • Liigub ('Moves'). Tallinn: Perioodika 1980. 22 pp.

Literature on the author

  • Ain Kaalep : Heino Mikiveri legend , in: Looming 4/2004, pp. 634-636.
  • Leonhard Lapin : Survival in the absurd . Interview, in: Estonia 1/2003, pp. 21–28.
  • Leonhard Lapin: "Tervist, seltsimehed!" Hommaga à Heino Mikiver , in: Akadeemia 10/2005, pp. 2234-2240.
  • Miki - eesti absurd isa. Koostanud Leonhard Lapin. Penikoorem, Tallinn 2001.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cornelius Hasselblatt : History of Estonian Literature. From the beginning to the present. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 2006, p. 574.
  2. ↑ Lapin 2005, p. 2234.
  3. ↑ Kaalep 2004, p. 635 f.
  4. ↑ Hellar Grabbi: Ilmar Mikiver ja eesti kirjandus, in: Looming 6/2011, p. 820.
  5. ↑ Lapin 2005, p. 2236.
  6. ↑ Lapin 2003, p. 24.
  7. ↑ Cornelius Hasselblatt: History of Estonian Literature. From the beginning to the present. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 2006, p. 651.
  8. ↑ Lapin 2003, p. 25.
  9. ↑ Lapin 2005, pp. 2236-2237.
  10. ↑ Lapin 2005, p. 2235.
personal data
SURNAME Mikiver, Heino
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Estonian artist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Loksa
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 2004
Place of death Tallinn