Johann Voldemar Jannsen, writer, journalist and poet was born May 16, 1819.

The son of a miller and an innkeeper, Jannsen went on to become an important figure in the Estonian Age of Awakening.

Birth Bicentenary of Johann Voldemar Jannsen (1819-1890)
Issued Estonian post in 2019
Designed by Vladimir Taiger

Johann Voldemar Jannsen (l6./4. V 1819 – 13. /1. VII 1890) was one of the founders of Estonian press and the Song Festival tradition, a cultural figure and writer during the Estonian Age of Awakening, and the father of Lydia Koidula and Harry Jannsen. Jannsen’s works represent Estonian literature’s transition from religious to secular, from the borrowed to the original and from folkloric oral tradition to a written language. His mission was to shape the self-awareness of Estonians as a nation, based on the principles of equality between nations and races, humanism and the ideology of Christian democracy.  
Johann Voldemar Jannsen – Estonian Writers Online Dictionary