Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (26 December [O.S. 14 December] 1803 – 25 August [O.S. 13 August] 1882) was an Estonian writer who is considered to be the father of the national literature for the country. He is the author of Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Estonian. (April 2015) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Estonian Wikipedia article at [[:et:Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|et|Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Quick Facts Born, Died ...

Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald
Born	26 December [O.S. 14 December] 1803 Jömper Manor, Jömper, Kreis Wierland, Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire (in present-day Jõepere, Lääne-Viru County, Estonia)
Died	25 August [O.S. 13 August] 1882 (aged 78) Dorpat, Kreis Dorpat, Governorate of Livonia , Russian Empire (present-day Tartu, Tartu County, Estonia)
Resting place	Raadi cemetery
Occupation	Writer
Movement	Estonian national awakening

Close

Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald's parents were serfs^[1] at the Jömper estate, Governorate of Estonia, Russian Empire (in present-day Jõepere, Lääne-Viru County). His father Juhan worked as a shoemaker and granary keeper and his mother Anne was a chambermaid. After liberation from serfdom in 1815, the family was able to send their son to school at the Wesenberg (present-day Rakvere) district school.

In 1820, he graduated from secondary school in Dorpat (present-day Tartu, Tartu County, Estonia) and worked as an elementary school teacher. In 1833, Kreutzwald graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the Imperial University of Dorpat.

Kreutzwald married Marie Elisabeth Saedler on 18 August the same year. From 1833 to 1877, he worked as the municipal physician in Werro (present-day Võru).^[2] He was the member of numerous scientific societies in Europe and received honorary doctorates from a number of universities.

Kreutzwald is the author of several moralistic folk books, most of them translated into German: Plague of Wine 1840, The World and Some Things One Can Find in It 1848–49, Reynard the Fox 1850, and Wise Men of Gotham 1857. In addition to these works, he composed the national epic Kalevipoeg (Kalev's Son),^[3] using material initially gathered by his friend Friedrich Robert Faehlmann;^[4] and wrote many other works based on Estonian folklore, such as Old Estonian Fairy-Tales (1866), collections of verses, and the poem Lembitu (1885), published after his death.

Kreutzwald is considered to be the author of the first original Estonian book. He was one of the leaders of the national awakening, as well as a paragon and encourager of young Estonian-speaking intellectuals.

• Andrew Lang's Fairy Books
• J. R. R. Tolkien
• Kalevala