Julius Seljamaa

Julius Seljamaa (undated recording)

Julius Friedrich Seljamaa (born March 27 ^{. Jul} / 8. April  1883 ^greg. In Sindi , Governorate of Livonia ; † 17th June 1936 in Tallinn , Republic of Estonia ) was an Estonian politician, diplomat and journalist. He was Foreign Minister of the Republic of Estonia from October 1933 to June 1936.

Early years

Julius Friedrich Seljamaa was born the son of a weaver. He attended primary school in Sindi from 1890 to 1897.

Seljamaa studied from 1899 to 1902 at the teachers' college in the Livonian capital Riga . From 1902 to 1909 he was a teacher and from 1905 director at a teaching institution in Taali (today the rural community of Tori ), from 1909 to 1914 at a school in Rakvere .

In 1914 Seljamaa moved to Saint Petersburg , where he graduated from high school the following year. In the Russian capital he studied 1915-1918 jurisprudence . In Petersburg he also worked as a journalist for the petty-bourgeois Estonian-language daily newspaper Pealinna teataja (“Capital Gazette ”). Seljamaa was accredited as a journalist at the 4th State Duma .

Politician and journalist

After the February Revolution he became politically active. In 1917 he was a leading member of the " Union of Estonian Republicans " ( Eesti Vabariiklaste Liit ). In the same year Seljamaa was elected as a member of the Provisional Parliament of the Estonia Governorate . He was also a member of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly (Всероссийское Учредительное собрание).

After Estonian independence was proclaimed in February 1918, Seljamaa was, together with Johan Laidoner, the official representative of the Provisional Government of Estonia in Soviet Russia . At the same time he was Russia correspondent for the newspaper Eesti Päevaleht .

From 1918 to 1921 Seljamaa worked as both a journalist and a diplomat. From the end of 1919 he took part in the negotiations for the Tartu Peace Treaty . The peace treaty of February 2, 1920 marked the end of the Estonian War of Independence between the Republic of Estonia and Soviet Russia.

Seljamaa was one of the co-founders of the Estonian Labor Party ( Eesti Tööerakond ). He was a member of both the Constituent Assembly of the Republic of Estonia ( Asutav Kogu ) and the first term of the Estonian Parliament ( Riigikogu ). Until 1921 Seljamaa was editor-in-chief of the Estonian newspaper Vaba Maa ("Free Land"), one of the most important daily newspapers in Estonia during the interwar period .

diplomat

Seljamaa then made a career in top diplomatic posts in the Republic of Estonia. From January 1922 to May 1928 he was the Estonian envoy to Latvia , from 1925/26 to Kaunas, Lithuania, and from May 1928 to 1933 to the Soviet Union .

From October 1933 until shortly before his death in June 1936, Seljamaa was in the cabinet of the head of state and government Konstantin Päts, Estonian foreign minister. He was considered cautious, objective and cautious in all public statements. Contemporaries described him as a conscientious file worker. He was a staunch supporter of the cordon sanitaire , a strong buffer zone between the Western powers and the Soviet Union, and for this reason advocated a Polish-Lithuanian compromise.

Seljamaa was nominated as Estonian envoy to the Italian government (as well as to Austria and Hungary) in early June. He died of cancer at the age of 53 in Tallinn , before he received his credentials . Julius Seljamaa is buried in the Rahumäe Cemetery in Tallinn.

Private life

Julius Seljamaa was married to Anna Maria Pütt (1892-1989). The couple had a son and a daughter.

literature

• Eesti elulood. Tallinn: Eesti entsüklopeediakirjastus 2000 (= Eesti entsüklopeedia 14) ISBN 9985-70-064-3 , p. 468

Web links

• Biography of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Estonian)
• Biobibliographical information (ISIK)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.nommevalitsus.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9145&Itemid=100&lang=en