Street Art in Tallinn

 

One of my brothers and sister-in-law had visited Tallinn a year ago and raved about the street art there [1]. Actually, I only came back with one important photo of street art and when I showed it to them, they said, oh, we didn't see that one. But I missed the spontaneous strett art. Actions where artists really put art on the walls without completely having planned it for a client, like the example I'm showing here. Anyway, the picture itself on the wall is beautiful and I hope it stays there for a long time. And what else? I took a few more photos, which I'll come to in a moment.

But first I'd like to talk a little about Tallinn itself. Tallinn is the capital of Estonia [2] and thus also the most populous city in the country. Tallinn used to be called Reval. We'll look at Reval and Tallinn etymologically in a jiffy. For me as a child and teenager, Reval was more the name of a cigarette brand [3]. The Reval brand and the Roth Händle brand were considered strong, but I can't find out how strong, because the half-hearted conscience of industry and politics agreed on upper limits for tar content and nicotine levels instead of banning cigarettes altogether. There was a joke: "Anyone who smokes Reval will eat small children too." I think that all cigarette brands, no matter how "light", or smoking products in general are detrimental to health. I have just revived an old article about ginseng cigarettes, because the writing on the pack simultaneously lists health risks and makes claims about how much these cigarettes are good for your health [4]. In 1976 a Reval cigarette cost around €0.06 in Germany, now a cigarette costs €0.45 - still too cheap!

Tallinn means Danish castle. And that goes back to Danish rule after the Battle of Lyndanisse [5] in 1219. Reval comes from the Estonian Rafala. The German form Reval was used internationally (adapted in each case), because Tallinn received city and trading rights from Lübeck and the Hanseatic League in 1248. The place itself has certainly been inhabited for 5000 years.

And what else am I showing? A painting on the wall of a church; would you call anything but street art?! And historical at that! On my last trips I saw a lot of anti-Russian street art, i.e. politically motivated street art, which I did not see in Tallinn. The embassy and the outside walls are free of it, although the railings in front of the Russian Embassy are used for protests. And I took photos from the old pharmacy [6] looking outside through a fishbowl [7], the water was colored blue.

Links and Annotations:
[1] Here are some example from the net: https://www.visittallinn.ee/eng/visitor/ideas-tips/tips-and-guides/street-art-in-tallinn and https://streetartmap.com/tallinn/ ... as my article isn't about street art in sensu strictu.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallinn
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reval_(cigarette)
[4] Ginseng Cigarettes https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/12/ginseng-cigarettes.html
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lyndanisse
[6] I'll write later about the old pharmacy, which has been operating since 1582.
[7] And yes, I thought of Pink Floyd's „Wish You Were Here“, too.

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Religious Affiliation in the recently visited States of the Baltic Sea

 

Archcathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
and St. Andrew, Frombork in Poland,
where the astronomer and mathematician
Nicolaus Copernicus worked a canon

When I recently traveled through the states around the Baltic Sea, namely northern Germany, Poland, the Baltic states and Finland, I noticed that the individual countries have very different religious affiliations. I will explore this in this blog post.

Germany
As I began my journey in Germany and ended it in the north (Lübeck), I will also start with Germany. Christians make up around 55% of the population in Germany as a whole, with Catholics and Protestants each making up around 28%. Catholics predominate in southern Germany and Protestants tend to be more prominent in northern Germany [1]. Germany was christianized from the fifth century onwards. Starting in the 13th century, German crusaders, the Teutonic Knights, conquered pagan Prussia and converted it to Catholicism. In the 16th century, Martin Luther and the Swiss reformers (Zwingli and Calvin) started the Reformation. The Thirty Years' War from 1618-1648 resulted in a division into Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed churches [2].

Lübeck is located in Schleswig-Holstein. In 2011, 51.5% of the population there were Protestant, 6.0% Roman Catholic and 42.5% were non-denominational, belonged to another religious community or did not provide information. In 2022, however, things looked significantly different: 39.1% Protestant, 5.5% Catholic and 55.3% were non-denominational, belonged to another religious community or did not provide information [3]. In any case, a move away from the major Christian churches can be seen.

In neighboring Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the situation is completely different. According to a study from 2022, 83.7% of the population are non-denominational or belong to small religious communities. Over the last 150 years, the proportion of Protestant and Catholic church members has fallen from 99% to 16.3% of the population [4]. These figures can be traced back to the 40-year policy of the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) in the GDR (German Democratic Republic). In 1950, 85% of the population of the GDR were Protestants and 10% Catholics. By 1989, these figures had fallen to 25% Protestants and 5% Catholics. The GDR constitution of 1949 provided for "complete freedom of belief and conscience" in Article 41, Paragraph 1, but the constitutional reality was different [5]. From 1954, the SED introduced the ritual of socialist youth consecration, which was intended to "form the growing generations into socialist personalities" and alienate them from the churches. As one can see, this was successful. They were not very successful in anti-fascism, as can be seen, but that is another topic.

Lübeck Cathedral (Lübecker Dom), a brick-built Lutheran cathedral

Poland
For many people, Poland is still a predominantly Catholic country. But the number of Christians in Poland is also decreasing. At least in a 2021 census, 71.3% of Poles were Catholic, the other Christian denominations made up only 1.2%, 6.9% had no religion and 20.6% left the question unanswered [6]. The forerunners of the Poles are considered to be the West Slavic and Lechian peoples, who practiced different forms of pagan belief ("rodzimowierstwo"). Lechian goes back to the forefather of the Polish people, Duke Lech, named in a legend, and is perhaps more commonly known from the term Lechian languages [7], which are used to group together Kashubian, Slovinian (extinct), Polabian (extinct) and Polish. In the early days of the Polish state, different religions coexisted, but after the beginning of christianization in 966, the pagan religions were gradually eradicated over the next few centuries. We should not forget the Jewish faith either, because until World War II, a large proportion of Eastern Jews lived in Poland, so that about 10% of the population was of the Jewish faith. The Shoah destroyed Jewish life, culture and religion. The percentage was particularly high in Poland, because after the German invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II, escape was hardly possible. In a 2011 census, the percentage of people of Jewish faith was given as 0.004% [8]. While the GDR managed to reduce the number of believers from 95% of the population to 30% within 40 years, Catholics in Poland proved more resistant to the socialist maxim of atheism. Pope John Paul II played a major role in ensuring that this remained the case, perhaps also through his support of the Solidarity trade union federation (Solidarność) [9].

Christ's Resurrection Basilica in Kaunas (Lithuania)

Lithuania
In Lithuania, too, the dominant religious group are the Catholics. Through the Union of Lublin, Lithuania was united with Poland from 1569 to 1795 as the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth or simply as Poland-Lithuania. Before that, however, there was already a personal union of the country's rulers through the Krewo Agreement of 1385 [10]. Catholicism was the state religion. While the nobility converted, the common man or the peasants continued to follow pagan beliefs for a long time. According to a census of 2021, 74.2% were Catholics, 4.4% Orthodox, 0.6% Lutherans and those without a religious affiliation made up 13.7% [11].

Window in the Riga Cathedral (Latvian: Rīgas Doms; German: Dom zu Riga)

Latvia
In Latvia we find a completely different situation, and the country's history is also decisive for this. Latvia was christianized late, partly through what was later called the Northern Crusades, when the kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden but also the German military orders (Livonian and Teutonic Orders) not only wanted to christianize but also to stake out their spheres of influence. Finnish paganism and Baltic mythology persisted in the region for a long time, and some festivals retain pagan roots to this day.
Let's look at today's figures, or rather the 2019 census. 31.1% did not state any religion, but the largest proportion is Lutheran with 36.5%, followed by Catholics with 19.0% and Orthodox with 13.5%. During the Soviet era, some places of worship were used ecumenically, as I have already reported [12].

Estonia
In Estonia, things are significantly different from the other two states of the three Baltic republics. We have already looked at the historical ties between Poland and Lithuania. Lithuania and Latvia are connected by a branch of the Baltic languages. Without wanting to anticipate, because I would like to look more closely at the languages of the region, Latvian and Lithuanian belong to the East Baltic branch [13] – we will also have to look at extinct languages, but that would not take us any further here. Estonia is linguistically very different, because Estonian is a Finno-Ugric language like Finnish and Hungarian. Historically, Estonia was a Lutheran Christian nation like Finland, although Christianization began in the 13th century with the Livonian Crusade. Before World War II, 80% of the population were Protestant, mainly the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia. Here too, the influence of Stalinist-style socialism seems to have been greater among religious communities.
The picture today is rather frightening. Religion plays an important role in the lives of only 14% of the population. In the 2021 census, the statement "no religion" leads with 58.4%, Orthodox Christians make up 16.3%, which probably corresponds to the Russian minority, and Lutherans 7.7%.

Church of the Holy Spirit, Tallinn (Estonia)

Finland
Finland is a predominantly Christian nation [14]. It has two national churches, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, to which 65.2% belong, and the Finnish Orthodox Church, to which 1.1% of the population belong. Other Christian groups or non-Christian religions play a subordinate role, but are present in public life, for example through their own cemeteries. 32.0% of the population in the above-mentioned census described themselves as having no religious affiliation.
Finland was Christianized in the 11th century, before that Finnish paganism was the predominant religion in the country. The Church in Finland was part of the Church of Sweden, so that with the confirmation of the Reformation by the Swedish Diet in 1527 (during the reign of Gustav Vasa), the Roman Catholic confession was replaced by the Evangelical Lutheran confession [15]. And so it remained, despite all political perils.

I hope I have not gone into too much detail, because that is what you should do yourself. The Wikipedia articles alone provide material for a long reading, but we know that there is much more to be found behind these articles.

Tempelbau Church, a Lutheran church
in Töölö (Helsinki, Finland) aka the Church of the Rock

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://www.familysearch.org/de/wiki/Kirchengeschichte_des_Deutschlands
[2] https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Germany_Church_History
[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleswig-Holstein#Konfessionsstatistik
[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecklenburg-Vorpommern#Religion und
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecklenburg-Vorpommern#Religion
[5] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Demokratische_Republik#Religionen_und_Religionsersatz
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Poland
[7] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lechische_Sprachen
[8] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religia_w_Polsce
[9] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarno%C5%9B%C4%87
[10] This is far too extensive, but also quite interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Commonwealth
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Lithuania
[12] Sigulda 4 – Evangelical Lutheran Church https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/08/sigulda-4-evangelical-lutheran-church.html For ecumenical use of the church: https://caminolatvia.com/object/sigulda-evangelical-lutheran-church/?route=646&stage=636
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_languages
[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Finland
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelical_Lutheran_Church_of_Finland

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Almost 30 years ago the Ferry M.S. Estonia sank

 

Almost 30 years ago, the ferry M.S. Estonia sank on the way from Tallinn to Stockholm. Why am I writing about it on this blog post? When we visited St. Nicholas Church in Tallinn, I noticed a painting that commemorates this accident. It is a memorial site. Another point was that later, after visiting the church, we talked about this tragic accident in the tour group. At that point, I thought that the cause of the accident had been clarified. I had promised to find out more about it. Another point was also important to me, namely that it was almost 30 years ago and it didn't seem that long to me. Of course, I can't try to solve this complex problem here and I've only read the Wikipedia articles to give a condensed view of some aspects of the accident.

In St. Nicholas Church, there is a picture hanging on the wall showing a stylized ship and a figure of the Virgin Mary with her arms outstretched. Next to M/S "Estonia" is the date of the disaster (September 28, 1994) and reference is made to the ninth verse of Psalm 28, which reads: "Oh, save your people and bless your heritage! / Be their shepherd and carry them forever." This is one memorial site, but there are others, such as the Broken Line Monument in Tallinn [1], which I unfortunately wasn't able to visit. There are other memorial sites in Estonia and Sweden. Why Sweden in particular? The French Wikipedia text helps us here [2]: of the 852 victims of the disaster, 501 are from Sweden and 285 from Estonia.
One might argue about the place for the picture with the heating and the pipes. But I think it's a good place as I at least felt like being on a ferry.

Reason for the disaster
In the following I refer mainly to the text of the German Wikipedia article [3], because it is the most detailed one. The Estonia sank on 28 September 1994 on its way from Tallinn to Stockholm off the Finnish island of Utö. With 852 victims, this was the worst shipping accident in post-war European history. The course of the accident has been largely clarified, but not the cause of the accident. The ship was built in 1980 by the Meyer Werft in Papenburg [4].

What happened?
In heavy seas (waves up to 10m high), water entered the Estonia. The hinges of the bow hatch were subjected to great stress in the rough sea and broke during the journey, allowing water to enter. When the ship did not reduce its speed, the bow visor finally broke off, allowing large amounts of water to enter the ship unhindered. The ferry quickly began to list heavily and sank within a short time. Just a few minutes after the first distress call "Mayday" at 1:22 a.m., radio contact was lost and shortly afterwards the Estonia disappeared from the radar screens of the surrounding ships, which then headed towards the scene of the accident. The MS Mariella was there just an hour later. The rescue was made difficult by the rough sea and the 13°C cold Baltic Sea water. Only 137 people were rescued and young men had the best chance of survival. Most of the dead are still in the ferry because the list and the rapidly penetrating water meant that most of the passengers had no chance of getting from inside to the deck of the ship.

What theories have been developed?
A commission from the states of Sweden, Estonia and Finland investigated immediately after the accident until 1997; an investigation report was published. The locking mechanism of the bow visor failed under the weight of the waves. A deviation approved during construction, not having to extend the bulkheads upwards, may have contributed to the accident. The crew was not aware of the open bow visor, e.g. the sensors still showed a closed bow visor when it had already broken away. Meyer Werft assumed detonations for the blowing away of the visor, but a material report refuted this theory.

What about the concrete sarcophagus?
The Swedish government planned to ensure the peace of the dead by means of a concrete sarcophagus, but costs, protests and the fact that normal diving is impossible at the depth of the wreck led to a no-go agreement, which 8 of 9 Baltic Sea coastal states and Great Britain joined. Germany did not join because special regulations for later investigations into the cause were missing. Two Swedish members of a team of documentary filmmakers (depoying diving robots to the wreck in September 2020) were convicted of  violating the peace of the grave in 2022.

What happened next?
Sweden changed laws in 2021 to legalize investigations, but the investigations carried out subsequently did not produce any findings that contradicted the 1997 investigation report. Various conspiracy theories were still being investigated, such as a collision with a Russian submarine.
In 2019, a court in Nanterre dismissed civil suits against the Meyer Werft and the French inspection company Bureau Veritas, which had classified the ship as seaworthy, because neither gross nor intentional misconduct on the part of the defendants could be proven.

Have I been afraid on the journey from Helsinki to Travemünde? No, because the sea was calm, the sad experiences were incorporated into improvements to the ship and regulations, and the Russian submarine [5] travelled on the surface.
The next time I'll visit Tallinn, I will definitely visit the Broken Line Monument. And I am still pondering why the ninth verse of Psalm 28 was chosen for the picture in St. Nicholas Church.

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://www.visitestonia.com/en/the-broken-line-monument
[2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia_(ferry)
[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia_(Schiff,_1980)
The articles in English, Swedish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian are much shorter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Estonia
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/M/S_Estonia
https://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia_(laev_1980)
https://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia_(pr%C4%81mis)
https://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia_(keltas)
I already mentioned the French article.
The Spanish article provides an English transcription of the emergency radio traffic from 01:21:59 to 01:25:52 a.m. https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/M/S_Estonia
[4] I was familiar with the shipyard because we surprisingly had a large number of patients from Papenburg on the Lower Rhine (Rheinisches Rheuma Zentrum in Meerbush-Lank) until a rheumatologist settled closer to the town.
[5] I'Ve already written about the Russian submarine: https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/07/an-encounter-in-baltic-sea.html

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