The author of these letters, Karl Irdt (1862–1927), was an ordinary Estonian labourer born in Pärnu County, and their addressees were his sons, away from whom the events of history had taken their father. Irdt was a trained house painter, yet he had also worked in numerous factories. He had lived in Riga for over 20 years, and all three of his sons were born there: Arseni (1899–?), Voldemar (1901–1959) and Karl (1909–1986), who later became the long-term artistic director of the Vanemuine Theatre, Kaarel Ird.

The family left the big city of Riga as war refugees in 1915 due to World War I and moved to a more peaceful village milieu near Toropets, where they found shelter with relatives. The mother of the family Helene Irdt (1871–1915) died in the autumn of that same year. The following year, the family’s father moved with Karl and Arseni to Kilingi-Nõmme in Pärnu County to live with relatives. Voldemar stayed in Russia to continue his studies and to send the family’s belongings after them. In the autumn of 1916, Irdt moved with his youngest son to Tallinn, where there were more prospects to find work. His oldest son Arseni, who had a serious mental disability as a consequence of a trauma that he had suffered in childhood, remained in Pärnu County under the care of relatives. Most of the letters were in fact sent from Tallinn, where Irdt lived until the autumn of 1917, thereafter moving back to Pärnu County. The last letters were written from Kilingi-Nõmme. At that time, Voldemar was working in Tallinn.

Historical events and milestones from private life are intertwined in these letters, the big picture of history, so to speak, and the individual’s view of them from the micro level. Here and there the letters contain the immediate impressions of a first-hand witness of some historical event (for instance the events of the February Revolution in Tallinn). Time was extraordinarily dynamic. Those years were filled with important events: World War I, the Russian revolutions, the Estonian War of Independence, and the birth of independent statehood.

The genuineness of these letters is charming, with everyday concerns and joys, the dream that the family could be together again, words of wisdom for his son, and much more. The letters are published without changing the original writing style and they are from the Estonian Literary Museum’s Cultural History Archives from Kaarel Ird’s personal archive (EKM EKLA, f. 307, m. 271: 9). A few documents from that time and photographs from Ird’s collection supplement the publication.