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AutorenbildPhotos Without Families

Olga and Andreas Kaugver



These lovely people were Olga and Andreas Kaugver.




Andreas Vilhelm Karrofeld was born on May 16, 1894, in Kurtna, Estonia, to parents Jüri Karrofeld and Maria née Otto. His early adult years were spent working as a labourer for a manor house in Russia. After WWI, he returned to Estonia and became a clerk-accountant.



Olga Lukina Tinnuri was born on September 29, 1895, in Kihlevere, Estonia, to parents Juhan and Minna Tinnuri.




Andreas Vilhelm Karrofeld and Olga Lukina Tinnuri married on October 23, 1920, in Haljala, Estonia. On February 25th, 1926, the couple’s only son Raimond was born.

In the 1930s it became popular to change German-sounding surnames into more Estonian-sounding ones. Surnames had been given to Estonian peasants (serfs) by their German masters at the beginning of the 19th century. That’s why many surnames sounded very German. The dislike for Baltic German superiority peaked in the 1920s and 30s which resulted in a new law that gave the citizens the right to change their surname if they so wished. In 1937, the Karrofelds changed their surname to Kaugver.


In 1939, as a result of the Secret Protocol to the Non-Annexation Agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Estonia was “handed over” to the Soviet Union for “friendly” annexation. Of course, by 1941 the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were in war with each other, and Germany invaded the territory of Estonia. The Soviet Union answered with extensive bombings all over Estonia. In one of those bombings on Rakvere in 1944, Olga died of her wounds from shelling. She did not live to see her 50th birthday.


At the same time, Andreas and Olga’s son Raimond Kaugver, who had just graduated from high school in 1942, fled to Finland in 1943 and joined the Finnish Army in the fight against the Soviet occupation. When he returned to Estonia a year later, he was soon arrested by the Soviet occupants under the notorious Soviet Criminal Code article of “treason”. After 1,5 years in prison Raimond was sent to a work camp in Vorkuta in Siberia. He got the permission to send letters to his father Andreas and his first love Sigrid back in what had become the Socialist Republic of Soviet Estonia. He was released 3 years later and returned to his loved ones.



It took more than a decade before Raimond Kaugver became one of the most popular and the most published writers of Estonia. His work is what you would refer to as Estonian Classics. His experience in the Soviet work camp, the physical and emotional torture and humiliation, the pain he had endured and the heartache from losing his mother to war, left a strong stamp on his future literary work. His letters to his father Andreas as well as to his first love Sigrid while in Siberia were later published as books alongside his many novels, collections of short stories and radio plays. He passed away in January 1992.



His father Andreas passed away in January 1972 in Rakvere. He never re-married.




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