Kalju Ahven

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Kalju Ahven (born September 11, 1921 in Räpina ; † July 26, 1946 in Lübeck ) was an Estonian poet .

Life

After elementary school (1929–1935), Ahven went to the Higher Garden School in Räpina (1935–1939). He then worked for a year as an intern in a bank and then for two years as managing director of the high school in Abja . He spent the academic year 1942/43 at the teachers' college in Tartu . In 1943 he was employed by the German occupation army , which forcibly mobilized him in 1944.

With the German Wehrmacht he took part in their retreat via Saaremaa and Danzig and in this way ended up in prisoner-of-war camps in Denmark and Holstein . He suffered from tuberculosis and was no longer able to cope with these exertions, so that he died in the prison camp.

Literary work

Ahven began to poetry while he was still in school, but hadn't published anything when he died. It is thanks to his friend and fellow prisoner in the camp, Otto Alexander Webermann , that his name has not been completely forgotten. Webermann collected the abandoned papers and wrote his doctoral thesis Kalju Ahven on them. Life and work of an Estonian poet contemporary with whom he in 1951 at the University of Göttingen to Dr. phil. received his doctorate. In 1956 Webermann also published the - only - book with poems by Kalju Ahven, which had previously only appeared in the exile press.

Ahven's poetry is partly written in South Estonian and often reflects "nature and love motifs as well as sad premonitions". The focus on nature is also evident in the numerous metaphors related to plants and natural phenomena , as Webermann noted: "The Kalju Ahvens environmental group, from which he draws his pictures, is nature, only a few pictures belong to the intellectual circle of thought." However, in his poems, which can be written in free verse as well as in the strict form of the sonnet , interpersonal relationships are often central.

Together with his brother, the linguist Heino Ahven , Kalju Ahven was one of the founders of the literary group Tuulisui , whose most prominent representatives were Raimond Kolk and Kalju Lepik , who also went into exile.

bibliography

  • Kas mäletad? Luuletusi 1939-1946 ('Do you remember? Poems 1939-1946'). Stockholm: Vaba Eesti 1956.

Secondary literature

  • Otto Alexander Webermann: Kalju Ahven. The life and work of a contemporary Estonian poet. Göttingen, Diss. Phil 1951. 286 pp.
  • Otto A. Webermann: The poetic picture in Kalju Ahven, in: Commentationes Balticae 1 (1953), pp. 207-223.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eesti kirjanike leksikon. Koostanud Oskar Kruus yes Heino Puhvel. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat 2000. p. 22.
  2. ↑ Otto A. Webermann: Das Dichterische Bild bei Kalju Ahven, in: Commentationes Balticae 1 (1953), p. 222.
  3. ↑ Eesti kirjandus paguluses. XX sajandil. Toimetanud Piret Kruuspere. [Tallinn:] Eesti TA Underi ja Tuglase Kirjanduskeskus 2008, p. 463.
  4. ↑ Cf. Cornelius Hasselblatt : History of Estonian Literature. From the beginning to the present. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 2006, p. 575.
personal data
SURNAME Ahven, Kalju
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Estonian poet
DATE OF BIRTH September 11, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Rapina
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1946
Place of death Lübeck