In an interview given to ERR's Novaator portal, Jõekalda and Kaljundi highlight that researching Estonia's manors can, on the one hand, open a window into the workings of past societies, but on the other, their idealized portrayal has sometimes obscured some of history's darker aspects.

In summary:

- During both the national awakening of the 19th century and the Soviet occupation of the 20th, the manor was interpreted as a symbol of oppression. Since Estonia regained independence, however, researchers have increasingly emphasized the historical interwovenness of Estonian and Baltic German cultures.

- At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, portraying Estonian and Livonian lands as part of the "glorious colonial history" of medieval Germans aimed to compensate for their lack of overseas colonies, compared with other European nations

- Already in the previous centuries, early modern writers and Enlightenment thinkers had been drawing parallels between Baltic serfdom and overseas colonialism. The corpus of texts they created also provided inspiration for Estonian nationalists.

- Understanding the heated manor debates of the early 20th century may help us recognize extreme viewpoints in today's monument controversies.

- The resurrection of manors" during 1970s in Soviet Estonia set up a paradox: It was then that the culturally "alien" German monuments, popularly associated with serfdom and humiliation, somewhat unexpectedly became Estonian national heritage.

- Due to the many disruptions in Estonian history, our best-known manors are reconstructions — this means a specific moment in the building's diverse past has been selected and restored, ignoring other historical layers. This has created an illusion of uniformity.

Andres Reimann: To the casual observer, a manor is likely nothing more than a nice old country house, usually surrounded by oak trees. You argue, however, that the manor is a phenomenon that played not just an important role in Estonian history, but that its study provides insight into historical power relations, economics, art, architecture, and this corner of the world's connections to the wider world. Does this mean that we no longer know how to appreciate the diverse roles, histories, and meanings of manors today?

Linda Kaljundi: This book is actually based on a lecture series developed in cooperation between EKA and Tallinn University (TLÜ), which we've been organizing for quite some time together with Professor Ulrike Plath, who is also the third editor of this volume. The driving force behind the course was exactly the observation you described — manors seem familiar, but when you think more deeply about them, we mostly associate them with manor centers or picturesque main buildings, deep in the countryside.

When we invited people to give lectures and later to write articles, we time and again discovered for ourselves just how multifaceted these manors really are. They act like filters or screens through which we can explore local history in new ways — studying the relationships, both good and bad, between different ethnic groups. One can also study the manor as a producing unit, and its everyday life in all its mundane cultural richness, which often isn't so familiar at all.

If we ask why and how the image of manors has become more one-sided over time, I would link it to current "manor nostalgia" and the manor "renaissance" that had already begun in the late Soviet era, ie. in the 1970s–1980s. That was a time when many manor complexes were improved and made representative again, becoming familiar to the people once more. The manors restored at that time are often the places people visit most, and primarily imagine when they think of manors.

Kristina Jõekalda: Naturally, this doesn't concern only non-experts — even among academics, the picture tends to be one-sided. Art historians and heritage conservationists mostly focus on buildings and their decorative aspects, while historians tend to deal with facts and figures — like who owned what in which decade, how many manors were burned down, how much was produced — often leaving visual culture aside.

Our interest was to bring together different disciplines within the humanities — to have, for example, folklore and oral tradition researchers (such as Marju Kõivupuu and Andreas Kalkun in our volume) work alongside historians (like Toomas Hiio and Inna Põltsam-Jürjo), cultural and literary scholars (including Heiki Pärdi and Maris Saagpakk), and art historians and practicing restorers.

Within Estonia's national historical memory, manors have been contradictory symbols — on one hand, a mark of German noble power and oppression, on the other, a catalyst for national awakening, cultural, and aesthetic development. Based on the different chapters of the book, can we say that we've found a new way to interpret manor history? What new meanings have manors acquired in today's context of identity formation?

KJ: Perhaps it's best to start with those very stereotypes. If we consider the recent crises around Soviet monuments or broader xenophobia — the strong reactions to symbols of "foreign" culture — there are many parallels to how manors were perceived during the 1905 revolution, or in the 1920s Republic of Estonia. A few years ago, [art historian] Krista Kodres penned an opinion piece about the monument crisis, asking whether we should start burning down manors too. Today, most Estonians probably no longer feel that kind of internal resentment toward manor houses. Our interest is in examining how, after various political shifts, society has similarly dealt with the "foreign."

LK: I think this anthology — and broader research around manors — reflects a changed attitude toward Baltic German culture. For a long time, during both the national awakening and the Soviet era, Baltic German culture was viewed negatively — as a symbol of oppression. Since Estonia's re-independence, especially from the 2000s onward, researchers have increasingly emphasized the mutual intertwining of Estonian and Baltic German cultures. This has helped better understand how, alongside injustice and hierarchy, there has also been diverse coexistence and cultural exchange between the two communities. This is a recurring theme throughout the book and broadly characterizes the new attitude toward Baltic German culture in recent decades.

KJ: There are differences between disciplines here. For example, in literary studies, it's easier to distinguish authors by language — to examine Estonian and German-language authors separately — something that's recently been reevaluated. In art history, hierarchies between so-called high and low art have long dominated: all "high art" was mostly foreign when Estonia became independent, yet still became the focus of research. Each discipline has raised different research questions, which, when placed side-by-side in the context of manor buildings, become especially revealing.

The manor system is compared in the book with colonial power systems. How justified is such a comparison? We know that Baltic Germans defended serfdom with arguments similar to those used by slaveholders in the ante-bellum southern United States. So can we draw direct parallels to, say, British or French colonial administrations, or is the Baltic specificity more important here?

LK: A key word here is "borrowed-ness." My article and the entire anthology attempt to show that comparisons with overseas colonies function as mirrors or literary models for addressing local issues. At the same time, these models strongly influenced how Baltic Germans themselves conceptualized their power in the Baltic — increasingly in colonial terms in the early 20th century.

Already from the early modern period, when Europeans began conquering overseas colonies, travelogues and critical texts drew parallels between Estonian and Livonian peasants and the serfs working on colonial plantations. This comparison was later also used by enlightenment thinkers and Estonian nationalists to criticize inequality and noble privilege in Baltic society.

On the other hand, Baltic Germans themselves began using the colonial analogy positively. Germany, which only unified in 1871, had long been a country without colonies. To compensate, as Ulrike Plath's research has shown, the medieval colonization of Eastern Europe by Germans was reinterpreted as their "glorious" colonial past. According to German authors of the time, their colonial history stretched even further back than that of the French or British. So these themes are largely a matter of interpretive models.

A separate question is how much medieval and later German dominance in these lands can be compared in detail to non-European colonies or to overseas plantation economies. This isn't the central theme of the anthology, but it's certainly a rich field for future research with many facets.

KJ: Our goal wasn't simply to apply trendy new approaches, like postcolonial studies, to this material. Colonial vocabulary actually appears quite strongly already in 19th- and early 20th-century texts. In art history, it was often a positive term used to stress that these lands were German colonial lands. It also meant asserting that local culture belonged to Europe, rather than to the Slavic world of the Russian Empire.

Kristina Jõekalda, in your article, you say that between 1900 and 1920 there was a debate surrounding manors that resembles what we now call the monument wars — such as those tied to the Black Lives Matter movement, or the ongoing war in Ukraine. What was this debate about, exactly, and is there anything we can learn from it for our current discussions?

KJ: What we can learn most is how to recognize extreme positions — even when they are masked as seemingly neutral generalizations. Earlier, we talked about transnational approaches and entangled history. In art history, a nationally-centered approach hasn't been as dominant — at least when it comes to pre–national awakening art — but in the writing of art history itself, texts have traditionally been treated separately by language, and that has created problems.

One well-known work still used by manor researchers is Heinz Pirang's three-volume Das baltische Herrenhaus ("The Baltic Manor House"), published in the 1920s. What motivated me to write this article was the realization that although this work is long familiar, its ideological firework display has never been critically analyzed. Already in the first few pages, quite extreme German nationalist and pro-colonial positions stand out, framing his entire discussion.

My second main exemplifier is Georg Dehio, originally from Tallinn, who became one of Germany's most prominent art historians and heritage conservationists in the early 20th century — but whose writings on the Baltics have not been much studied. These are mostly opinion pieces published in newspapers at politically charged moments during World War One. These statements are very propagandistic, and that's exactly what I have highlighted in my piece.

Seemingly neutral historical writing often functioned as a tool to stress German cultural dominance — the goal was to reinforce the idea that all local history is essentially German. According to this narrative arc, the Teutonic/German knight and merchant came here in the 13th century, bringing with them Christianity and culture, which ultimately gave rise to the dense network of manors as the pinnacle of Baltic German achievement.

This motif recurs in accounts from the 1920s and 1930s as well. If we look at these German-language texts as distinct from the Estonian ones, however, we wouldn't realize how the extreme nationalist narratives in German and Estonian are actually in dialogue — the Estonian texts often directly respond to the German views. Rhetoric like this tends to surface in times of crisis, including surrounding monuments.

Linda Kaljundi, in your chapter you focus on the question of why manor-era serfdom has become such a powerful site of memory for Estonians. You say that the reason lies in the constant re-articulation of the status of serfdom and its adaptation to various contexts and needs. So how exactly was manor-era serfdom encoded into the Estonian psyche?

LK: The concept of a lieu de mémoire — a site of memory — was introduced in the 1980s by the French historian Pierre Nora. He was less interested in historical facts and more in who, what, and how certain things have been remembered from the vastness of the past. Sites of memory can be significant historical events, figures, or phenomena around which collective memory coalesces. They are phenomena that have gained special meaning for a group and help organize its view of the past. The past is vast and complex in its diversity; sites of memory help to structure and simplify it.

Later cultural memory scholars have emphasized that for an event, figure, or phenomenon to remain a site of memory, it must be continuously reproduced in different cultural forms. It must circulate within the culture — only then does it gain and maintain significance over time. Each new representation adds new layers: On the one hand reinforcing existing meanings, on the other, transforming them. That's exactly what we can see with manor-era serfdom, as a site of memory.

What interested me personally was that this is not just a site of memory for Estonians. Serfdom under the manor system has a long historical stratification. Complaints about the enslaved life of Livonian (Livonia roughly covered the southern two thirds of present-day Estonia, and much of present-day Latvia — ed.) peasants begin as early on as the early modern era. This sparked interest in Europe on the poor conditions of the local peasantry, and a rich body of texts emerged, describing violence and oppression. This all happened during a time when Livonia's medieval governance had collapsed, and the region was a battleground. The crisis also deepened broader interest in the region.

Later, we can see how Enlightenment thinkers took over these same texts critical of serfdom, developed them further, and introduced even stronger comparisons with overseas colonies. When the Estonian national movement really got underway, in the 1860s, there already existed a solid body of texts to draw from. Nationalists defined themselves in opposition to the Germans, especially the manor lords, and could make use of borrowed imagery from early modern chronicles, travelogues, and Enlightenment texts — vivid and often violent depictions of local peasant oppression.

But why does the notion of Estonians as a nation of serfs persist so stubbornly in our cultural memory even today?

LK: I wouldn't underestimate the influence of the Soviet period. Whereas during the 1920s and 1930s — especially during [President Konstantin] Päts's authoritarian "silent era" — portrayals of Estonians as slaves and lamenting over peasants' degrading life were not encouraged, as this narrative suited Soviet power to a tee. It was grounded in World War Two-era propaganda that stressed the oppression of Estonians, and blamed the Germans. Class struggle and anti-German sentiment were central to the Soviet historical narrative — many images, texts, films, and exhibitions were created, and the theme of serfdom was given a central role in school textbooks.

At the same time, as noted, this was already a powerful tool from the early national movement, allowing guilt to be placed on Germans and Baltic Germans. But in shaping the self-image of the young republic, this narrative became uncomfortable. In the 1920s, Estonia struggled with the lack of a positive and confident historical self-image. For Soviet power, however, this posed no problem at all. The narrative of historical oppression became part of broader class-struggle propaganda, fitting neatly into the Soviet interpretation of history.

KJ: In fact, we can view the manor as a whole as a site of memory. You could say that it was from this strong anti-German sentiment that the wave of manor rediscovery emerged in the 1970s. The restoration of Palmse Manor became something of a flagship project. It's an interesting paradox: German-origin heritage became, during the Soviet period, a category of Estonian national monument. Juhan Maiste has written about this; his comprehensive work "Eesti mõisad ja lossid. Aadlikultuuri seitse aastasada" ("Estonian Manors and Castles: Seven Centuries of Noble Culture") is starting to be published in tandem with our anthology. These perspectives complement one another.

Let us now talk a bit about architecture and art, by which manors are perhaps most deeply etched into the memory of modern Estonians. The book discusses how manor architecture reflected both social hierarchy and artistic trends. How did manor lords approach architectural innovation? Were manors designed based more on local conditions or were European models strictly followed? Did any original artistic styles or local features emerge in Baltic manors?

KJ: First of all, I should say that the anthology has much to offer beyond just art and architecture. With manors — throughout their history, even within the narrower context of the Baltics or Estonia — it is difficult to make generalizations that apply to every single manor. The buildings differ, manor owners had varying tastes and viewpoints, generations changed, and some manors frequently changed hands for various reasons. Each such disruption influenced decisions on when and how existing buildings were modified or new ones constructed. Sometimes changes were prompted by wars or fires — notably during the 1905 revolution.

The sequence of military conflicts has been significant in the periodization of architectural history. Heinz Pirang, who we mentioned earlier, structured his approach to manor history around conflicts — for him, the post–Great Northern War (1700-1721) reconstruction period of the early 18th century marked the golden age of manors, while he viewed the rearrangements before World War I as a decline.

Eclecticism is very characteristic of manors. Some manor owners aimed to create stylistically pure and period-accurate ensembles. But most manors — as far as we know from historical photographs and artworks — preserved very diverse layers simultaneously. Every generation left its mark: something was repainted, new ancestral portraits were added to the walls — sometimes even commissioned retroactively. These topics are explored in the anthology by Hannes Vinnal and Kadi Polli. A manor has always been a multilayered phenomenon, even architecturally. Today's overly romanticized and uniform vision of manors is exactly what we want to challenge.

LK: Our view of manors as architecturally unified or as representatives of a single style has definitely been shaped by later restorations. During the Soviet era, one specific time period was often selected — in both the building's exterior and interior — which was then emphasized, cleaned up, restored, and reconstructed.In recent decades, the heritage conservation approach has once again favored layering — bringing out traces of different eras. Manors reconstructed in the style of Palmse and Sagadi have shaped our visual perception of manors to be much more uniform than they historically were.

KJ: The anthology concludes with an article by Hilkka Hiiop and Riin Alatalu on this very topic. A particular feature of our context is that we have no surviving manors with complete interiors and art collections, unlike in Finland or Germany, where descendants of historical manor owners still often live in the buildings. Our manors are largely illusions or creative reconstructions — interpretations of a specific person and a specific moment in time.

You mentioned the destruction of interiors and artistic ensembles. The looting of 1905 is widely known, but did the furniture and interiors mostly vanish in various wars and the Soviet period, or where did they end up?

KJ: Furniture and artworks disappeared en masse after 1905, during World War I and the War of Independence, and later during World War II and the German occupation, when some Baltic Germans who emigrated in the 1939 Umsiedlung (Resettlement) returned to retrieve their left-behind property. In addition to these major ruptures, there were also other events that affected whether a particular manor's furnishings were preserved or neglected.

LK: When the Baltic Germans relocated to Poland in 1939, some of the furniture was taken with them, some was sold or otherwise disposed of. Pieces of manor furniture from that time can still be found in quite a few farmhouses today. But already in the 1920s–1930s, many manors were converted into schools, orphanages, and care homes, which significantly altered their interiors. Later came the Soviet-era remodeling.

During the manor restorations of the 1970s–1980s, for instance, Leila Pärtelpoeg reportedly searched antique shops in St. Petersburg for suitable furniture — naturally not pieces from Estonian manors, but period-appropriate furniture from elsewhere. These reconstructions have now themselves become fascinating objects of study. In some cases, today's conservators have even begun to mark or preserve Soviet-era additions and alterations — these have, in turn, acquired historical value.

But the picture created a few decades ago differs significantly from the manor interiors we see in old photographs. Fortunately, a fair number of these historical photographs have survived. Those interiors were certainly much less bare than the idealized reconstructions of manors we see today.

KJ: Not all manors were systematically redesigned in the 1920s right away — even assigning them a new public function often took a couple of years. Many were simply left standing empty. Others became schools, sanatoriums, or care homes — which, in itself, was a good thing, as they weren't left unused. However, this didn't always bode well for the preservation of furnishings. Awareness of heritage has also varied from one era to the next.

Today, manors are getting put into private ownership — made into spas, hotels, even homes. Are manors becoming once again a symbol of economic status, something affordable only to those wealthy enough to move out of Tallinn? What does the future for the manor in Estonia look like?

KJ: The manor isn't slowly moving in that direction — it already is there. Since the 1990s, the manor has become a status symbol for someone who has done well in life. There's nothing wrong with that. It is a good thing when manor buildings have varied functions and restoration approaches — this allows for experimenting with different methods. The book, for example, discusses Kõue-Triigi Manor, where an attempt has been made to apply the approach of a person who sees the manor as their home today.

LK: Owning and maintaining a manor requires a lot of money and commitment. Unfortunately, there are still many manors for which there simply aren't enough wealthy private buyers who could afford to purchase and maintain them. About a decade ago, the Estonian Museum of Architecture hosted an exhibition on manorial schools, which clearly showed that having a public function has been the most reliable guarantee for manor buildings' survival in the 20th century. Of course, there are also manors that have been in ownership and yet still decayed, or fell victim to various misfortunes.

"Mõisa fenomen Balti kultuuriloos. Vaatenurki üle uurimisväljade" (English: "The Manor as a Phenomenon of Baltic Cultural History: Crossdisciplinary Perspectives" is published by Tallinn University Press. The volume, edited by Linda Kaljundi, Kristina Jõekalda and Ulrike Plath, includes 12 articles, with summaries in English.

Editor's note: Other well-known manors in Estonia include Alatskivi, Tartu County, Sangaste, Valga County, Vihula, Lääne-Viru County and Glehni loss, Harju County. The Estonian-language Wikipedia page on the topic lists hundreds of manors, though these include destroyed or no-longer existing sites, ruins, derelict, still-standing and fully-restored buildings.

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