PARENTS

Growing up in a Russian-speaking family, Ksenia received her early education at home with the guidance of private tutors. Among them was also a French teacher who was French herself. Thus, both Ksenia and the other children spoke French from an early age. Ksenia went on to complete her secondary studies at the Russian-language Tallinn Girls’ Gymnasium, graduating in 1915.
Ksenia’s desire to study medicine arose when she was only nine years old, after her little brother Georg died of scarlet fever at the age of two. Of Jaan Poska’s eight children who reached adulthood, Ksenia and her younger sister Anna were the only ones who did not study law.

From 1915 to 1918, Ksenia studied at the St. Petersburg Women’s Medical Institute. After the outbreak of the revolution, she returned to Estonia. From 1919 to 1921, she continued her studies in Paris at the Faculty of Medicine of the Sorbonne University.
After the death of her father, Jaan Poska, Ksenia was no longer able to continue her education in Paris for financial reasons and returned to Estonia in 1921. As the Estonian state supported Poska’s children by covering their study expenses in Estonia until they obtained a university degree, Ksenia was able to continue her studies at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Tartu. She graduated in 1923.
Ksenia was a member of the women’s student corporation Amicitia, as were her younger sisters Anna and Helene.

In 1924, Ksenia began working in the internal medicine department of Tallinn Central Hospital. According to contemporary recollections, having received a Russian-language education up to her time in Paris, Ksenia did not know how to write in Estonian and wished to complete medical records in Russian. This was not permitted, and since she also did not know how to do so in German, she wrote the medical records in French instead.
From 1937 to 1939, Ksenia undertook further training in Hungary, and she also mastered the Hungarian language.
Dr. Poska worked at Tallinn Central Hospital until 1940, when the Soviet authorities deported her from Tallinn, as the daughter of Jaan Poska, to the Järva County Hospital.

Dr. Ksenia Poska at her 10th work anniversary at Tallinn Central Hospital, photo Estonian Health Museum

In 1941, Dr. Poska was assigned to work in the internal medicine department of Haapsalu Hospital. In 1944, she saved numerous young Estonian wounded legionnaires from falling into the hands of the communists by placing them in the infectious diseases ward under the label of typhus patients.
In 1945, Ksenia became the head of the internal medicine department in Haapsalu and remained in this position until her death. Dr. Poska was a highly respected physician. In addition, she also worked at the Haapsalu Tuberculosis Dispensary.

Ksenia was the only one of Jaan Poska’s children who did not emigrate to Sweden in 1944 and remained in Estonia. The reasons were both professional and personal.
Ksenia felt it was her duty to help her brother Jaan when he returned from prison (the news of his execution in a Russian labor camp only became known decades later).
In addition, she did not want to abandon her patients as a doctor who had resumed her practice. She was not sure that, without knowing Swedish, she would be able to find work as a doctor in Sweden.

In Haapsalu, Ksenia Poska was known not only as a respected physician but also for her extravagant appearance and manners. Raised as a lady of aristocratic upbringing, she did not know how to perform household tasks such as lighting the stove, preparing food, or cleaning—she was assisted in these matters by servants even during the Soviet era. Helpers also assisted the Paris-trained lady in taking care of her appearance. Strict adherence to Orthodox customs was very important to her.
Ksenia remained unmarried and had no children.

Ksenia died on December 1, 1964, in Haapsalu. Having worked as a physician until the end of her life, Dr. Poska requested to be laid in her coffin wearing her doctor’s coat.

The eldest daughter of Jaan Poska was buried at the Inner City Cemetery in Tallinn beside her father. The funeral arrangements were assisted by Arpad, the son of Ksenia’s younger sister Tatjana, whom Ksenia had supported earlier in life. Ksenia and Arpad, as the only descendants of Jaan Poska living in Soviet Estonia, preserved the items that had belonged to Jaan Poska throughout the Soviet period. Thanks to Arpad’s son, Jaan Arder, these items have now returned to the Jaan Poska House.

Vera received her primary education at home with private tutors.  She attended school for only four years: at the age of 13 she entered the 5th grade of the Tallinn Girls’ Gymnasium and graduated in 1915 with a gold medal. Vera received her education in Russian, as the Poskas spoke Russian at home, and she attended a Russian-language school.

At the girls’ gymnasium, Vera also obtained the qualification as a Russian-language tutor. Private tutor was the highest qualification available to women before women were admitted to universities.

Already during her gymnasium years, Vera had decided to become a lawyer, writing in her diary in 1913:
“I myself want to enter the Faculty of Law, even though women still have no rights to work as lawyers. Father, however, claims that by the time I graduate, women will have gained those rights.” Poska was right.
After graduating from the girls’ gymnasium in 1915, Vera left for St. Petersburg, where she began studying law at the Bestuzhev Higher Women’s Courses.
Why did Vera not choose the University of Tartu, which in that same year, 1915, had begun admitting female students? One reason may have been the lack of a secondary school leaving certificate (matriculation certificate), which was required for admission to a classical university and which girls’ gymnasiums did not issue. The matriculation examination had to be taken at a boys’ gymnasium and required, among other things, additional study of Latin and extra science subjects not taught at girls’ gymnasiums. Preparing for the examination usually took a year. The Bestuzhev Higher Women’s Courses, however, were a private university that did not require a matriculation certificate and allowed students to complete Latin and other subjects alongside their studies.
St. Petersburg may also have been favored by the opinion of her father, Jaan Poska, who believed that the education there was better than at the University of Tartu.
Already in 1917, her father called Vera back to Estonia, explaining that he could not afford to keep two children studying away from home (her sister Ksenia was studying medicine in St. Petersburg). In reality, the farsighted Poska may have wished to remove his daughter from the political turmoil in St. Petersburg.
In September 1917, Vera returned to Tallinn and began helping her younger sisters prepare for their matriculation examinations.

Until then oriented toward the Russian language and world culture, Vera’s identity and outlook changed after Estonia gained independence. In the spring of 1918, at a student meeting where Russian and Estonian students’ positions diverged, Vera – following the example of her older sister Ksenia -sided with the Estonians. She began to consider herself Estonian and Estonia her homeland, to which she wished to devote her life.
In 1918, Vera, who had previously lived in the Russian-language sphere, began learning Estonian with the help of Timotheus Grünthal. On his recommendation, she joined the Estonian Students’ Society Põhjala, of which “Timm,” as Vera called him, was also a member. Friendship developed into love.

On 24 September 1919, Vera and Timotheus Grünthal were married in Haapsalu. Since Timotheus served as a chairman of the Saare County Government, they settled in Kuressaare. As a member of the Constituent Assembly, Timm frequently stayed in Tallinn, while Vera sought social engagement. In 1919–1920, she worked as a history and civics teacher at the Kuressaare Gymnasium.
When Jaan Poska died on 7 March 1920, Vera and Timm were unable to attend the funeral because the sea was frozen. A few months later, in July 1920, their first child, Constance – known as Tanni – was born.

As both Vera and Timm wished to continue their interrupted law studies at the University of Tartu, Timm resigned as chairman of the Saare County Government in August 1920, and the young family moved to Tartu. That same year, both enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Tartu.
Vera graduated from the university in 1924. By then, she already had three children. In addition, in 1922–1923, Vera hosted her sister Tatjana, who had arrived from Hungary with her newborn son.
After the death of their mother Constance on 8 December 1923, care for the younger Poska children was initially taken over by the eldest daughter Ksenia, who had just graduated from the University of Tartu  and had begun working at Tallinn Central Hospital. In 1924, Ksenia called Vera to Tallinn to help.

As soon as Vera had completed her studies and her son Ivar was born, she moved to Tallinn. At that time, all the Poska siblings lived in the same house – 15 people in total.
Having received her university diploma in 1925, Vera began working in 1926 as an assistant to a sworn attorney. She also worked at the Tallinn Legal Bureau, which provided assistance to those who could not afford legal services – most often women caught in difficult life circumstances. According to Vera Poska, it was precisely this experience that made her a women’s rights advocate.

When Timotheus became a Justice of the Supreme Court, the family moved back to Tartu in 1929, where Vera continued her academic work at the university.
In 1935, she became a sworn attorney. In 1939, Vera Poska-Grünthal, the mother of six children, obtained her Master of Laws degree at the University of Tartu, becoming Estonia’s first female Master of Laws. Later that same year, she began lecturing in social welfare law at the university, becoming the first female lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Tartu.
Vera participated in reforming Estonia’s family law with the aim of expanding the rights of married women and improving the legal status of children born out of wedlock.

During the German occupation in 1943, Vera completed her doctoral thesis on juvenile delinquency, but it was never submitted. She stated that young offenders should be treated differently from adults, a view that conflicted with the authoritarian German regime.

Throughout her life, Vera was highly active in public life, participating in both Estonian and international women’s organizations in Estonia and later in Sweden. She was also the main organizer of the Poska family’s emigration to Sweden in 1944. Unfortunately, Vera could not find work as a lawyer in Sweden. She earned her living at the Royal Central Bureau of Statistics, as well as working in an archive and as a factory typist.
In 1955, Vera began publishing the expatriate Estonian women’s magazine Triinu in Sweden, which connected Estonian women around the world. She served as its editor-in-chief for 30 years. After Vera, publication of the magazine was taken over by her eldest daughter Constance (Tanni) in Canada.

Vera Poska-Grünthal published three memoirs:
“Jaan Poska’s Daughter Tells” (1969),
“This Was in Estonia” (1975), and
“Life Continues in Exile” (1985).
In them, she describes life in her childhood home and her university studies, her professional and political activities in pre-war Estonia, and life as a refugee.

Vera had seven children in total, six of whom grew up:

• Tanni (Constance) (Pill) Kents (1920, Kuressaare – 2005, Toronto, Canada)

• Ivar Grünthal (1924, Tartu – 1996, Gothenburg, Sweden)

• Veera Gleason (1925, Tallinn – 2018, Matthews, North Carolina, USA)

• Esmo Grünthal (1927, Tallinn? – ?)

• Timotheus Grünthal (1930, Tartu – 2008, Odensjö, Sweden)

• Toomas Grünthal (1935?, Tartu – ?)

The most well-known of Vera’s children is her third child, Ivar Grünthal, who was a physician by profession but also worked as a poet and translated Estonian poetry into Swedish. Like his older sister Tanni, Ivar was active in Estonian exile journalism, serving as editor-in-chief of the cultural magazine Mana.

Vera and Timotheus with their children in 1930s, from the left: Ivar, Timotheus, Tanni, Veera. Photo: Saaremaa Museum

Among Vera’s best-known grandchildren is Raoul Grünthal (born 1966), the son of Timotheus Grünthal, who led the Swedish branch of Scandinavia’s largest media group, Schibsted Media, for 15 years and also served as CEO of Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden’s third-largest newspaper).

Another prominent grandchild is Sharon Louise Gleason (born 1957), daughter of Vera’s daughter Veera. She is a U.S. federal judge and the first female federal judge in the state of Alaska, appointed by Barack Obama in 2012. Gleason has also been an active musician, playing the saxophone and for many years the clarinet in the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra, the largest city orchestra in Alaska.

Hollywood and Broadway actress Alison Pill (born 1985) is the granddaughter of Vera’s eldest child, Tanni (Constance), and her first husband Kaljo Pill. Alison was born in Toronto, where she also received her acting education. Having begun her acting career on film at the age of 12, she has become known as an adult for her work in theatre, film, and television. Wider recognition came from the series The Newsroom and American Horror Story, as well as the films Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Milk. Pill is valued for her versatile and profound interpretations of roles and has received a prestigious Tony Award nomination—the “Oscar” of the theatre world.

Like her siblings, Tatjana received her primary education at home. Among the Poska children’s tutors was a French governess who taught them French, so the children spoke the language from an early age.
Tatjana completed her secondary education at a Russian-language secondary school. After graduating, she went on to study French at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

It is said that after completing secondary school Tatjana had planned to enter a convent and become a nun, but this intention was thwarted when she fell in love with the young baritone Aleksander Arder, whom she heard singing at a salon evening held at their home.

In 1921 Tatjana and Aleksander Arder were married at the Haapsalu St. Mary Magdalene Orthodox Church, where most of the Poska children were wed.

Aleksander Arder, who had previously graduated from the Riga Theological Seminary, was at that time studying singing in Italy. In December 1922, while travelling back from Italy to Estonia, Tatjana gave birth prematurely to a son. Doctors managed to save the seriously ill Tatjana, who remained in Budapest to recover together with the newborn child. Aleksander returned to Italy. The son, born in Hungary, was named Árpád after a medieval Magyar tribal leader.

In January 1923 Tatjana wrote to her elder sister Vera that she wished to return to Estonia. Her brother Jaan travelled to Budapest to fetch her and the child and brought them to Tartu to Vera, who was studying at the university while raising her two small daughters. Exhausted by illness, Tatjana stayed with Vera until summer, when Aleksander Arder returned from abroad and obtained an apartment in Nõmme.

Tatjana’s marriage to Estonia Theatre soloist Aleksander Arder broke down due to the man’s fondness for alcohol. Tatjana filed for divorce, took her son Árpád, her younger brother Jüri and her younger sister Niina, and moved to Paris in 1926.

At the University of Paris, Tatjana resumed her French language studies, which had been interrupted by marriage and the birth of her child. In addition, she studied journalism at the Paris Institute of Social Sciences, writing her diploma thesis on Jaan Tõnisson. Tatjana’s sister Niina and younger brother Jüri continued their schooling in Paris, while little Árpád remained at home.
Tatjana also studied Hungarian at the University of Budapest.
After graduating from the University of Paris in 1929, she returned to Estonia.

In 1930 Tatjana married Eduard Laaman, whom she had met in Paris. Laaman became a father to Árpád, and the couple also had two daughters: Ilona, born in 1934, and Silvia, born in 1936. The family lived in a house owned by the Poska family at 6 Poska Street.

On 24 February 1941 the NKVD arrested Eduard Laaman on charges of anti-Soviet activity. His wife Tatjana and the children were placed on the list for deportation, but since the family was not at home at the time, instead spending the summer in Võsu, they escaped deportation.

Eduard was taken from Tallinn to the Kirov prison camp, where he was executed in the autumn of the same year. The NKVD did not inform relatives of executions, and families waited for decades in the hope of their loved ones’ return.

The death of Eduard left deep psychological scars on Tatjana, and especially on her daughters.

Eduard Laaman (12 February 1898 in a Crimean Estonian village – 1 September 1941 in the Kirov prison camp in Russia) was trained as a lawyer (University of St. Petersburg) but worked as a journalist. Among other positions, he served as press secretary of the Estonian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and at the Tartu peace negotiations. In 1918 he also worked closely with Jaan Poska as secretary of the Estonian Provisional Government. In 1919–1920 Laaman was press attaché of the Estonian Embassy in London.
From 1921 to 1924 Laaman served as head of the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which in practice meant the position of head of foreign intelligence, organizing the collection of intelligence from Russia through officers disguised as press attachés.
After leaving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the prolific writer continued his journalism career, becoming editor-in-chief of one of Estonia’s largest daily newspapers, Vaba Maa, in 1924, a post he held until the paper was closed by Estonian authorities in 1938.
From 1939–1940 until the start of the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Laaman served as press attaché of the Estonian Embassy in Moscow. In 1941 the NKVD arrested Laaman, accusing him of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. The NKVD was unaware of his intelligence activities in 1921–1924, which attests to their high level of secrecy. After interrogations in Tallinn, Laaman was taken to the Kirov prison camp and executed there.

In 1935 Laaman published the most comprehensive biography of Jaan Poska, which has served as the main source for most later studies. With keen research instincts and a skilled pen, Laaman also published other works on Estonian independence, the War of Independence, and biographies of political figures.

When the NKVD arrested Tatjana’s husband Eduard Laaman in 1941 and sent him to the Kirov prison camp, his family was sentenced to deportation to Siberia. They escaped only because at the time of deportation they were not at their Kadriorg home at Leineri (Poska) Street 6 but were spending the summer in Võsu.
In 1943 the German occupation authorities arrested Tatjana for assisting her son Árpád in escaping from the German army. Tatjana spent eight months in Tallinn prison. Árpád, who was caught during his escape attempt, was also imprisoned and in 1944 was sent back to the front.
In the autumn of 1944 Tatjana fled to Sweden with her daughters Silvia and Ilona, like the other Poska children. Emigration was facilitated by her mother Constance’s paternal Swedish origin.
After leaving the refugee camp in 1945, Tatjana worked as a sales assistant in a toy shop in Lidingö. From 1950 until her retirement in 1967 she worked as an archivist at the Faculty of Law of Uppsala University. Her daughters Ilona and Silvia continued their education in Swedish primary school and completed secondary education at the French School in Stockholm.

In 1959 Tatjana earned a doctorate in law at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Her dissertation examined reforms in Swedish criminal probation over the previous 100 years.
Tatjana researched the psychological background of prisoners and offenders with psychiatric diagnoses. During her research she visited prisons and mental hospitals in France and Sweden and concluded that criminals’ earlier lives often involved psychological trauma.
As a legal scholar, Tatjana Laaman published professional articles in both French and Swedish.

Tatjana Laaman died on 14 March 1988 in Uppsala at the age of 87. She lived longer than any of the Poska children. Tatjana is buried at Skogskyrkogården Cemetery in Stockholm.

Ilona Laaman (10 February 1934, Tallinn – 26 June 2017, Uppsala)
Ilona, who fled to Sweden at the age of ten with her mother and sister, completed her secondary education at the French School in Stockholm. She graduated from Uppsala University with degrees in Russian and French philology. In her youth Ilona worked as a nurse in a mental hospital.
Laaman became known as a poet and translator who translated Estonian prose into Swedish. Her poetry conveyed irony, protest against prevailing social norms, and skepticism toward religion, which stood out against the Orthodox background of the Poska family.
In 1997 she published her autobiography in literary form, Water in the Oven.

Árpád  Arder (06.12.1922, Budapest – 19.09.1995, Tallinn)

Árpád Arder’s studies at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Tartu were interrupted by the German occupation. While attempting to escape mobilization into the German army by fleeing via Finland to Sweden, he was captured by a German military patrol and imprisoned in Patarei Prison. His mother Tatjana, who had assisted in the escape attempt, was also arrested. After eight months, Tatjana was granted amnesty and released from prison. Árpád, however, experienced a religious awakening while in prison and converted to Christianity.

Árpád was released from prison in February 1944 and was sent as a translator to the German army, serving in the Waffen-SS 20th Estonian Division. In Czechoslovakia, the division fell into the hands of local partisans. Before he could return to Estonia, Árpád was arrested by Soviet authorities and taken to a prison camp in Karelia, from which he was released in the spring of 1946.

After returning to Estonia and falling ill with tuberculosis, Árpád was helped to regain stability and supported financially by his aunt Ksenia, a physician and the only one of the Poska children who had remained in Estonia.
Arder joined the Evangelical Christian Carmel Congregation in Estonia. Veronika Salm, whom Árpád had known earlier, worked there, and the two married in 1949. When the Carmel Congregation was merged with Oleviste Congregation, Árpád became an office clerk there and Veronika the choir director. The couple had four children, two sons and two daughters: Ott (1950), Jaan (1952), Madli (1955), and Aade (1960).
Árpád worked for many years as a pastor in the Pentecostal Congregation in Rakvere and later in Suure-Jaani, preaching in Estonian, German, and Finnish. He was greatly loved by believers. In 1992 he published his memoir Where Is King Árpád?
Árpád Arder died in 1995. He is buried at Siselinna Cemetery, not far from the grave of his grandfather Jaan Poska.

Of Árpád Arder’s children, the best known are the beloved poet Ott Arder and the musician Jaan Arder, both born in Rakvere on 26 February, two years apart.
Ott Arder (26 February 1950 – 26 June 2004) was a poet and author of children’s books. He can without exaggeration be called a folk poet, as even those who do not read books know many of his texts by heart: numerous popular songs are written to his lyrics. They are simple and catchy, humorous and memorable.
A large part of the repertoire of the band Ruja is based on Ott Arder’s lyrics, including songs such as “A Kiss Through Frozen Glass,” “Come to the Forest,” and “Black Raven.” Songs based on Arder’s texts have also been performed by nearly all major pop bands of the older generation, including Apelsin (“Time Does Not Stop”), Rock Hotel, Ultima Thule, Karavan, and others.
Jaan Arder (26 February 1952 – 24 July 2014) was a musician whose range extended from the early music ensemble Hortus Musicus to beloved bands such as Kukerpillid and Apelsin. His silver-voiced songs “That Tune Captured Me” and “On the Island of Capri” are known to virtually every Estonian.
The Arder musical lineage is continued by Jaan and his wife Lembi’s children:
Helin-Mari Arder (born 1974) is a highly regarded jazz singer.
Jaan’s son, double bassist Andreas Arder (born 1978), is concertmaster of the orchestra of the Estonia Theatre.
Aleksander Arder (born 1981) has inherited his father Jaan’s beautiful tenor voice and sings in the Estonian National Male Choir.
Kristina Aimla-Volkov (born 1975) represents the family in the Jaan Poska Memorial Foundation.

The Poskas’ first son, Jaan Jr., like the other children in the family, received his early education in Russian at home with the help of private tutors.

At the age of 11, Jaan began his formal schooling at the Russian-language Alexander Gymnasium. In 1917, he moved on to the Tallinn City Boys’ Humanitarian Gymnasium (today’s GAG), where instruction was in Estonian.

In 1918–1919, Jaan worked at the Estonian Embassy in London, where his father secured him a position as a junior secretary.
Upon returning to Estonia, Jaan volunteered to participate in the War of Independence.

Afterwards, he resumed his studies and graduated from the Tallinn City Boys’ Gymnasium in 1920.

From 1920 to 1929, Jaan studied law at the University of Tartu. He was a member of the Estonian Students’ Society (EÜS).

After completing his university studies, Jaan became an assistant sworn advocate, and in 1935 a sworn advocate. From 1938, he served as a legal adviser at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Jaan was also a member of the board of the Estonia Society.

Jaan Poska’s first wife was the beauty Laine Ilona Kallas, the daughter of folklorist and Estonia’s first ambassador to Finland, Oskar Kallas, and his wife, the writer Aino Kallas, who were close friends of Jaan and Constance Poska.
They married in Haapsalu in 1924 and initially lived in the Poska family house.

Jaan’s wasteful and reckless lifestyle, mounting debts, and marital tensions led to their divorce in 1931.

The wedding of Jaan Poska and Laine Ilona Kallas at the Poska family summer house in Haapsalu, with Laine’s father, diplomat and folklorist Oskar Kallas, in the background, 1924.

In 1938, Jaan married again. His second wife was the charming Estonia Theatre actress and soprano Mercedes-Renate Kamp, known by her stage name Mari Kamp, who had studied singing at the Tallinn Conservatory under the guidance of Aleksander Arder.
In 1940, Jaan and Mari had a son, Jaan.

Mari Kamp performing at the Estonia Theatre, 1939

In 1940, the NKVD arrested Jaan Poska and sent him to the Kirov prison camp. In addition to his background, his membership in the Defence League, the Vaps movement, and the Fatherland League would likely have been sufficient grounds for his arrest. His voluntary participation in the War of Independence was in any case regarded as fighting against the Red Army.
The main reason, however, probably lay in his alleged involvement in the so-called Irboska massacre.

When Jaan Poska returned from London to Estonia, the War of Independence was under way. Poska voluntarily joined schoolboys who were assigned to the crew of Armoured Train No. 2.
In August 1919, this armoured train was tasked with transporting 102 pro-communist and anti-Estonian figures arrested at the 2nd Congress of Estonian Trade Unions to the Pskov front. Of these, 76 were sent across the front line, and 25 were shot as traitors to the state at Irboska by the armoured train crew.
Jaan Poska was also a member of this armoured train unit, although no testimony confirms his participation in the executions. Nevertheless, in 1941 Poska and six other armoured train soldiers were sentenced to death in the Kirov prison camp. The family learned of this only decades later.

In 1944, Jaan’s wife Mari Kamp-Poska fled to Sweden together with their son Jaan and married Sven Einar Boréus, who adopted Jaan.
Today, 85-year-old Jaan Boréus lives in Stockholm with his wife Irene. A few years ago, the elderly gentleman also visited his grandfather Jaan Poska’s house in Tallinn.

Anna, like her siblings, received her early education at home in Russian with the help of private tutors. She completed her secondary education in Estonian at Tallinn I Girls’ Gymnasium.

After graduating from gymnasium in 1923, Anna enrolled in the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Tartu. In 1924, she was one of the founders of the female student corporation Amicitia.

In October 1927, she submitted a request to have her name removed from the student register. Presumably, she wished to continue her studies abroad, as on 11 October 1927 the University of Tartu issued her a certificate of study to present to a foreign university.

Her plans to study in France apparently did not materialize, because a year later, in 1928, Anna enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Tartu. In both instances of university enrollment, the documents include a note: “Latin not completed,” indicating that she had not passed the Latin exam in gymnasium.

Just a year after re-enrolling, in early September 1929, Anna was expelled from the university. At the end of the same month, she married chemist and chemical engineer Artur Krik. The marriage was dissolved less than a year and a half later, in February 1931.

In September 1931, Anna’s sister Vera Poska-Grünthal submitted a request to the University of Tartu to send all of Anna Poska’s documents – birth certificate, gymnasium diploma, and certificate of university studies – as soon as possible to Anna’s address in Paris. These documents were needed by her sister for admission to a French university.

Again, nothing came of her university studies in Paris: on 2 May 1932, Anna gave birth to a daughter, Constance Lucie, nicknamed Čiča, in Nancy, France.

After returning to Estonia, Anna Poska worked as a teacher at the French Lyceum in Tallinn. She translated several children’s books from French into Estonian and also wrote a few children’s books herself.

On 7 September 1944, before emigrating to Sweden, Anna married Paul Loison (born in 1899 in Odessa) at the Tallinn Civil Registry Office.

While living in Sweden, Anna earned money, among other ways, as a piano accompanist for a gymnastics group. Alongside raising her daughter Constance, nicknamed Čiča (1932, France – 2012, Sweden), she also raised the two daughters of her younger sister Niina, who had passed away at the age of 40.

Anna died at the age of 80 and is buried in Väse Cemetery in central Sweden, on the northern shore of Lake Vänern.

Helene (Jelena, also known as Ljolja) received her Russian-language primary education at home with the help of private tutors, as did the other children of the Poska family.
Helene acquired her secondary education in Estonian at Tallinn City First Girls’ Gymnasium, founded and headed by the educator and member of the Constituent Assembly Alma Tõrvand-Tellmann. Helene graduated from the school in 1925.

In 1925, Helene enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Tartu. In her final year at the university, she worked as a trainee at the Tallinn–Haapsalu Court of Peace.
In 1931, Helene graduated from the university, and at the end of the same year she became an assistant to sworn attorney Jaan Teemant.
Five years later, in 1936, Helene herself became a sworn attorney.

Already during her university years, in 1928, Helene married Richard (Riks) Niinemann (1901–1951), a lawyer and a friend of her elder brother Jaan. The young couple were married in the Haapsalu Orthodox Church, as were most of the Poska children. After returning to Tallinn, the couple lived at Poska Street 6, where Helene’s elder sister Tatjana also resided after returning from Paris. The youngest of the Poska siblings, Jüri, who had lived in Paris and initially also in Estonia with Tatjana, later moved in with Helene and Riks.
The marriage was dissolved in 1936 due to Riks’s fondness for alcohol.

Sworn advocate Helene Poska Niinemann died in 1939 after a rapid and severe case of pleurisy. She was only 31 years old.

Niina, the second youngest child of the Poska family, received her early education in Russian at home with the help of private tutors, like her siblings.
In 1926, she entered Elfriede Lender’s Estonian-language girls’ gymnasium, which she graduated from in 1931.

After graduating from gymnasium in 1931, Niina enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Tartu, in the Department of Economics, which she completed in 1935.
Niina was a member of the female student corporation Filiae Patriae.

In 1935, Niina was re-enrolled in the Faculty of Law, where she studied until her marriage in 1938.

On 21 January 1938, student Niina Poska and Aleksander Lehes from Valga were married in the Valga Orthodox Church. Aleksander was employed as a bank clerk in Tallinn.

After the wedding, the newly married couple travelled to England, as the Tallinn City Bank sent Aleksander to London for further training in banking.

Aleksander had graduated from the Valga Real Gymnasium and had studied intermittently at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tartu since 1922, completing his degree in 1940.

Niina and Aleksander had two daughters: Hele-Juuli (born 24 February 1939) and Kaie (born 21 January 1943). With two young children, the couple fled to Sweden in September 1944.

Life in Sweden was short for the Lehes family: Niina died of cancer in 1953 at the age of just 40, and Aleksander had passed away earlier, in 1949. Their daughters were raised by Niina’s older sister, Anna Poska.

Today, 86-year-old Hele-Juuli Lehes lives in Gothenburg, and 83-year-old Kaie Österberg lives in Frölunda, in western Sweden.

Jüri Gabriel Poska was born in 1919 in Helsinki in the home of Jaan Poska’s close friends, Oskar Kallas, Estonia’s first ambassador, and his wife, the writer Aino Kallas.
At the outbreak of the Estonian War of Independence, Foreign Minister Jaan Poska – who was himself seeking international recognition and support for Estonia’s statehood – took his pregnant wife Constance to Finland, where their youngest son was born.

When Jaan Poska died, Jüri was only one year old, and when his mother died, he was just under four. Jüri was raised by his sisters.

After their mother’s death, Jüri was taken into the care of his sister Vera Poska-Grünthal, who at the same time was raising her three children and caring for her underage sisters.
In 1926, his sister Tatjana took her little brother with her to Paris, where she was continuing her university studies.
After returning to Estonia in 1929, Jüri initially lived with Tatjana and later with his sister Helene Poska-Niinemann, who lived in the same building.

When seven-year-old Jüri moved to Paris with his sister Tatjana, he began his schooling at the local Lycée Montaigne.

After returning to Estonia, Jüri studied at Westholm Gymnasium in Tallinn, which he graduated from in 1937.

In 1937, Jüri Poska enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Tartu. At the beginning of the Soviet occupation, he was expelled from the university and worked as a teacher on the island of Hiiumaa.

In 1941, he returned to the university and graduated cum laude in 1942.
Jüri was a member of the Estonian Students’ Society (EÜS).

Jüri Poska at Vera Poska-Grünthal’s home in Tartu, 1938

Between 1941 and 1943, Jüri Poska was imprisoned three times – first by the Soviet authorities and twice by the Germans, the last time after being caught while attempting to flee to Finland.

At the same time, in 1942–1943, Jüri served as a candidate judge at the Tallinn District Court.

In 1944, before emigrating to Sweden, Jüri Poska married Helve Loorand, a local girl from Haapsalu.

After arriving in Sweden, Jüri worked from 1944 to 1946 at the Malmö Employment Office. He then began working as a legal adviser in Stockholm, providing legal assistance to many Estonians among others.

In Sweden, Jüri enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Stockholm University, from which he graduated in 1967 – 25 years after completing his law degree at the University of Tartu.

As a devoted Orthodox christian, Jüri was actively involved in the activities of the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church. He studied canon law at the Pontifical Institute in Rome and was ordained as a priest in 1972 at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Munich. In the same year, he became the second priest of the Resurrection Congregation of the EAOC in Gothenburg.

Jüri participated in the work of numerous international legal and ecclesiastical organizations and received recognition in the form of decorations and medals.

Jüri Poska as an Orthodox priest in Sweden, photo National Archives of Estonia

Jüri Poska died in 1974 near Stockholm at the age of 55. He lived only one year longer than his father.

While Jüri Poska was Orthodox, his wife Helve was a devoted Baptist. She worked as an accountant and, at the age of 65, enrolled in medical school to train as a nurse. Later in life, she also turned to poetry.

Helve Poska (1925 Haapsalu – 2020 Stockholm) published her first poetry collection at the age of 64 in 1989; her subsequent poetry books were published in Estonia. She is regarded as one of Estonia’s most stylistically refined religious poets, both in her use of motifs and biblical narratives and in the depth of her religious sensibility.

Originally from Haapsalu, Helve was a gifted and creative personality. In Estonian handicraft circles in Stockholm and Malmö, she passed on the tradition of Haapsalu lace knitting.

Helve Poska died at the age of 95 from coronavirus infection in Stockholm in 2020.

Jüri and Helve had four children. The eldest, Jaan-Jüri, who followed the family tradition by studying law in Stockholm, died at the age of 54, as had his grandfather Jaan Poska.

Their sons Hendrik Johan Poska (75) and Konstantin Urban Patrik Poska (67) live in Sweden, and their daughter Maria Elisabeth Poska Ormerod lives with her family in England.