DAVID DAVIDOVICH GRIMM IN ESTONIA

Abstract

The article is devoted to the Estonian period of life and activity of the prominent jurist and public figure David Davidovich Grimm (1864-1941). He was an active participant in the political life of pre-revolutionary Russia. Grimm was a member of the State Council of the Russian Empire, being the elected representative from the universities and the Academy of Sciences. The professor supported the February revolution. He collaborated with the Provisional Government. From March to July 1917 he was Deputy Minister of Education. D. D. Grimm emigrated from Soviet Russia in 1919. In early 1927, he received an offer to take up the Chair in the University of Tartu, and in September of the same year he moved with his family to Estonia. D. D. Grimm took an active part in the life of the Russian diaspora in Estonia. He was a member of the parish council of the Tartu Assumption Cathedral, the chairman of the local department of the Russian National Union. His apartment often served as a meeting place for Russian intelligentsia. In 1935, Grimm was invited as an expert to work on the new Civil Code (Constitution) of the Republic of Estonia. In February 1937, D. D. Grimm was appointed a member of the State Council (Riiginõukogu), the upper house of the newly created National Assembly (Rahvuskogu), as a representative of the Russian minority. In the Estonian period D.D. Grimm wrote memoirs on his participation in the State Council of the Russian Empire from 1907 to 1917, which are a valuable historical source, and which have only recently been introduced into scientific circulation. Very little is known about the last years of the scientist's life. The available sources do not yet allow us to say how he experienced the fateful 1939-1941: the beginning of the Second World War, the Sovietization of the Baltic States, together with the repression that developed there, the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and the seizure of Riga by the Germans. It is known for certain that Professor D. D. Grimm died on July 29, 1941 in Riga, shortly after its capture by German troops, and was buried in the Pokrovsky Cemetery.