Paul Johansen


Paul Wulff Johansen was an Estonian and German historian of Danish origin.

Early life and education

Paul Johansen was born in Tallinn to Jens Christian Johansen, a Danish land improvement engineer. He was the brother of the writer Ingeborg Johansen. He studied at Tallinn Cathedral School and graduated in 1919. In the summer of the same year, he joined the as a, but he did not serve on the fronts of the War of Independence. At the end of 1919, he began studying in Copenhagen and soon in Germany, initially as an agricultural engineer, but he soon abandoned this direction in favor of history. In 1924, Johansen became a doctor of history at the University of Leipzig, and in 1924 he presented his dissertation Siedlung und Agrarwesen der Esten im Mittelalter and received the research degree of doctor of philosophy. He returned to Estonia and started working at the Tallinn City Archives.

Career

Paul Johansen soon became one of the most important Estonian historians. He studied a huge amount of materials on both the older history of Tallinn, especially the history of settlement, and agrarian history, and he was one of the founders of this branch of study in Estonia. He made an important contribution to the study and interpretation of the agrarian and settlement history material found in the Danish Census Book, which resulted in a comprehensive overview of the settlement and agrarian conditions in northern Estonia in the 13th century. Johansen also drew attention to the Wanradt–Koell Catechism as the first definitely known partially Estonian-language publication. His greatest work was the settlement-history work Die Estlandliste des Liber Census Daniae, which was published in 1933 and explained many settlement-related issues in the areas of northern Estonia that had been under the Danish Kingdom. Johansen also discovered the founding document of the town of Paide in the Swedish archives and made other important discoveries. In 1934 he became the city archivist of Tallinn.
At the end of 1939, Johansen moved to Germany with other Baltic Germans and continued his work as a historian at the University of Hamburg. From 1942 to 1945, he was forced to serve as an interpreter on the German Eastern Front. In 1944, he also visited Estonia for the last time.
From 1945 to 1946, Johansen was a prisoner of war, and he then returned to the University of Hamburg, where he taught until his death. In Hamburg, he also worked diligently in the. In 1951, his book Nordische Mission, Revals Gründung und die Schwedensiedlung in Estland was published in Stockholm, in which, among other things, he hypothesized that Tallinn had grown out of two settlement nuclei, one Scandinavian and one German. In 1964, Johansen put forward the hypothesis that Balthasar Russow might be of Estonian origin. However, both this study and several other works remained unfinished because he died in the spring of the following year. Johansen also associated Tallinn with the notable Renaissance painter Michael Sittow, whose portraits had previously been attributed to a Flemish master.

Selected works

  • Siedlung und Agrarwesen der Esten im Mittelalter
  • Über die Schweden bei Reval
  • Die Estlandliste der Liber Census Daniae
  • Bruchstücke des Landbuches der Ordensmeister für Rujen und Helmet
  • Deutsch und Undeutsch im mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Reval
  • Balthasar Rüssow als Humanist und Geschichtsschreiber
  • Taani ja Eesti
  • ''Kaugete aegade sära''