Baltic Tragedy

“The Baltic Tragedy” is written by Siegfried von Vegesack who is one of the most famous Baltic German writers and it talks about the life and fate of an aristocrat family in Latvia and Estonia during the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Kertu Moppel and Karl Laumets have distilled Vegesack’s hefty 3-part novel into their own stage version which looks at this difficult period in history through a gallery of colourful characters.

The main character Aurel is still a child when he realises that there’s a mental glass wall between him as a son of the estate owner and the local Latvians who live next to him. When he goes to school in Riga, he has to call himself a Russian even though his dad has told him that he’s German. The rift deepens over time and the lives of Baltic Germans change irreversibly after the revolutionary events of 1905, World War I, red and white terror and the war against the Landeswehr.