Upper secondary school building

The building of the Läänemaa Joint Upper Secondary School on Wiedemanni Street in Haapsalu is in many ways connected to the Estonian Swedes. The school itself consists of three buildings built in different eras. The school has been teaching youths for more than 200 years.

The oldest part of the schoolhouse is located on Kalda Street and was built in the late 18th century as the house of a merchant. In 1805, a three-grade county school was opened there. Among the nearly 80 young men educated at the county school were Gustav Hirch, the personal physician of Alexander III and Nicholas II of Russia, who was born in Kullama, folk poetry researcher Matthias Johan Eisen, linguist Ferdinand Johann  Wiedemann, composer Rudolf Tobias and others. Teachers at the school included equally prominent figures. folklorists Alexander Heinrich Neus and Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Russwurm.

The latter also studied Estonian Swedes extensively and probably knew Swedish better than Estonian. He wrote a comprehensive study of the Estonian Swedes entitled ‘Eibofolke oder die Schweden an den Küsten Ehstlands und auf Runö’ (title in English: ‘Eibofolke or The Swedes On the Coast of Estonia and Ruhnu’). This study of the history, ethnography and folklore of the Estonian Swedes, published in 1855, is the first academic work on the Estonian Swedes, and scholars of the Estonian Swedes continue to refer to it to this day. Russwurm describes the life of the Estonian Swedes before it began to change under the influence of missionaries from Sweden in the 1870s and 80s.

The central section of the schoolhouse was built in 1888 for the Russian-language town school. The section on Wiedemanni Street was designed by architect Artur Perna for the Läänemaa Joint Upper Secondary School and it was completed in 1927.

In addition to the Läänemaa Joint Upper Secondary School, the schoolhouse also housed the Swedish Upper Secondary Private School from 1931 to 1943, which provided the highest level of education in Swedish in Estonia.

The idea of founding an upper secondary school was already discussed in the 1920s, but the plan solidified in the late 1920s. In 1931, the school was ready to welcome pupils in Haapsalu. The Swedish Upper Secondary Private School, which provided an education similar to that of the humanities-focused Estonian upper secondary school, started to operate in the same building as the Läänemaa Joint Upper Secondary School and used the Estonian school’s premises and teaching facilities free of charge. The school was led by Anton Üksti, who was also the head of the Läänemaa Joint Upper Secondary School, and many of the teachers also worked in the Estonian school at the same time. This meant that some of the lessons were taught in Estonian, enabling the Estonian Swedish youngsters to master the Estonian language. One such person who taught pupils in both schools was music teacher and composer Cyrillus Kreek. That being said, Kreek was in fact proficient in Swedish. The Swedish state also sent teachers. Most of the pupils were from the Swedish areas around Haapsalu, i.e. from Riguldi, Noarootsi, Sutlepa, Vormsi, but also from Haapsalu and Tallinn.

The school was officially opened on 21 August 1931, with distinguished guests from Estonia, Sweden and Finland. In the first year, 21 pupils were accepted to study for five years and graduate upon taking an  examination. The drop-out rate was high, with only 11 pupils graduating in the class.

The school was reorganised in 1940. During the Russian and also the German occupation, the Swedish pupils formed parallel classes in the Estonian school. Üksti was deported and it was no longer possible to get new teachers from Sweden. The Estonian Swedes who graduated from the same school a few years earlier now became the teachers. The last class graduated in the spring of 1943.

About 50 pupils in total passed the final examinations from the five classes, while the number of entrants was three times higher.