Oskar Kerson

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Oskar Kerson (born April 30 . Jul / 12. May  1887 greg. In pitcher Laatre , then rural community Sangaste , Governorate of Livonia ; †  the 30th December 1980 in London ) was an Estonian industrialist. From 1968 until his death he was president of the Estonian Central Bank ( Eesti Pank ) in exile .

Early years

Oskar Kerson was born as the son of the innkeeper couple Jakob (1857-1893) and Alvine Kerson (née Lutz, 1864-1949). The father died early. Oskar Kerson attended secondary school in Valga until 1903 . From 1904 he worked at the Alexandershöhe pharmacy in the Livonian capital Riga . 1907 presented at the University in Tartu from his examination as an auxiliary pharmacist.

From 1907 to 1909 Kerson went to the Richard Murmann Business School in Riga. In 1909/1910 he attended the business school in Nizhny Novgorod . He then studied from 1910 to 1914 agricultural science at the Riga Polytechnic .

With the outbreak of the First World War , Kerson was drafted to the military school in Kazan , Russia . During the war he was deployed in Saint Petersburg (1915/16) and from 1917 in Turkestan . He then worked as a teacher at a girls' high school in Tashkent .

With the proclamation of the independent Republic of Estonia, Kerson returned from Turkestan to his homeland in 1920. 1921/22 he was secretary of the Central Agricultural Association "Estonia" ( Põllumajanduslik Keskühisus "Estonia" ). He was also a member of the Estonian (Soviet) Russian trade delegation. From 1924 to 1926, Kerson was a commercial attaché at the Estonian legation in Moscow .

Industrialist

Oskar Kerson founded the joint stock company Eesti Kunstsarve Tehased O. Kerson & Ko in 1927, based in Tallinn. The international company specialized in the production of artificial horn . Kerson became one of the most important and wealthiest Estonian industrialists of the interwar period .

At the same time he was the Greek honorary consul in Estonia. His villa in Nõmme , built by the architect Edgar Johan Kuusik in the mid-1930s, was one of the most outstanding functionalist residential buildings in Tallinn of the time.

exile

With the (first) Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1940, its factories were expropriated and nationalized. Kerson fled persecution to Germany in July 1940.

During the German occupation of Estonia in World War II , Kerson was President of the Estonian Chamber of Commerce ( Eesti Majanduskoda ) from 1941 to 1944 . Before the (second) Soviet occupation of the country, Kerson fled the advancing Red Army into exile in the west in July 1944 . He lived in Germany until 1948, then in Ireland, and finally settled in Great Britain . In 1972 he published his memoirs there.

On January 21, 1968, the Estonian government-in-exile under Tõnis Kint appointed him President-in-exile of the Estonian Central Bank ( Eesti Pank ). Kerson held the office until his death in late 1980.

Private life

Oskar Kerson was married to Tatjana Kerson (born Dorožinska, 1898–1966). Their daughter Mirjam was born in 1933.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Estonian Register of Monuments
  2. ↑ Oskar Kerson: Rada otsides. Mälestusi. London 1972
  3. ↑ TLÜAR väliseesti isikud
personal data
SURNAME Kerson, Oskar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Estonian industrialist
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Krug Laatre , then a rural community of Sangaste , Livonia Governorate
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1980
Place of death London