„Tuhat tänu saadetud raamatute eest!“: Matthias Johann Eiseni kaastööliste kirjad kui raamatuloo allikad
„A Thousand thanks for the books…“ The letters of Matthias Johann Eisen and his coworkers as sources of book history

Summary/Abstract: The 19th century was an era of modernization in Estonia. One aspect of this modernization was interest in the nation’s past, which brought about widespread folklore collecting campaigns in the last decade of the century. These campaigns were organized by two men – Jakob Hurt and Matthias Johann Eisen – who both lived and worked outside the Baltic provinces and used newspapers to build up extensive networks of coworkers. This paper focuses on the campaign led by Eisen. Eisen was a very productive literary author who published more than 300 books on a range of topics including history, folklore, religion and temperance. He became interested in publishing books on folklore when he ended up as a parson in Kronstadt where he did not have access to a proper library. In 1887 he called on the Estonian-speaking public to send him riddles and, as a result, published a book of riddles in 1890. After that he focused on folktales and started publishing compilations of folktales that contained material sent by local collectors. Eisen’s habit of instant publishing was greeted warmly by collectors and the general public but frowned upon by scholars who were afraid that the books would affect the materials collected afterwards. One special trait of Eisen’s folklore collecting campaigns was his habit of sending books to his coworkers. This practice is widely known by scholars but has never been focused upon. My article tries to fill this gap. By doing a close reading of the letters of the collectors I have managed to bring out some of the statistical characteristics of the practice (the authors and topics of the books, the number of books sent to a single collector, books that were sent most often, etc) Delineating three case studies of particular collectors helped to show the variability of personal motivations behind the statistics. We can see that these books were quite an important part of the motivation of Eisen’s coworkers – this practice drew to Eisen’s campaign people who valued books and reading but who did not have access to books (due to lack of money or a geographically marginal position). However, to evaluate the meaning and function of this practice we need to contextualize it. There are two contexts which I find important. First, as an author Eisen did not receive money for his books, but his fee most often consisted of copies of his books or books by other authors published by the same publishing house. In the beginning Eisen used these books as exchange copies to build up his own library. Exchanging books for folklore enabled other people to build up their own libraries. Second, folklore collectors often turned to Hurt and Eisen to request help solving problems that had nothing to do with collecting campaigns. They asked for help finding jobs in Kronstadt (or, in the case of Hurt – St Petersburg), publishing their literary creations, etc. These problems were often connected to the changes brought about by modernization. As the collectors did not have resources to tackle these problems themselves, they tried to use folklore as a resource that could be exchanged for something connected to modernity. The books given by Eisen belong to the same context of modernity:again, collectors could use the exchange value of folklore to position themselves as modern literate persons.

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