Aleksander Warma

Biography

Aleksander Warma was born on 22 June 1890 (10 June, Old Style) at the Hindreku farm in the village of Viinistu on the Pärispea peninsula, then in the Governorate of Estonia of the Russian Empire. He attended the parish school, and in 1905 he finished the rural district school in Kõnnu.

In 1906 his father, Johannes Warma, together with eight fellow villagers, bought three hundred hectares of land with fishing rights at Kabböle on the south coast of Finland, and the family moved there. Aleksander became one of the first Estonians in that village.

The road to the sea began early. From 1907 he worked as a stoker, sailor, boatswain and mate; he studied at the marine schools in Käsmu and Narva, and he obtained his deep-sea captain’s certificate in Riga. In the First World War he served in the Baltic Fleet, passed the examination for the rank of ensign at Kronstadt in 1916, and until March 1918 was watch officer on the minesweeper “Zarya”. In 1915 he was awarded the Cross of St George. In the Estonian War of Independence he served in the Estonian Navy: from 24 November 1918 he headed a department of the naval administration, was assistant to the chief of staff and acted as commander. After the war he commanded the ship “Mardus” and worked as legal adviser to the naval staff. This required an education: in 1920 he sat external examinations at the Tallinn Teachers’ Training College, from 1921 to 1924 he studied international law at the University of Tartu, and he took his master’s degree in law with a thesis on the most-favoured-nation clause in commercial treaties. The thesis was defended in 1928 or 1929. In 1926 he retired with the rank of lieutenant commander.

Diplomatic service followed. Warma headed the legal bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then its administrative department, and in the early 1930s was counsellor at the Estonian legation in Moscow. From 1933 to 1938 he was consul general in Leningrad, in 1938–1939 envoy to Lithuania, and from 1939 to 1944 envoy to Finland; from 1941 his status there was unofficial.

In September 1944 he had to leave for Sweden: the Soviet Union regarded former citizens of the Republic of Estonia as its own citizens and demanded their extradition from Finland. In Sweden he became a prominent figure in the Estonian organisations that helped refugees.

From 12 January 1953 Warma was minister of foreign affairs in the government-in-exile and at the same time minister of justice, or acting minister of justice. From 1962 he was deputy prime minister and acting prime minister, and from the end of March 1963 until his death he was prime minister in the duties of the President of the Republic of Estonia. For an emigration that regarded the republic as still continuing, this meant the post of head of state. He was also a member of the National Council of Estonia and for a time its chairman, from 1964 he represented the government in Paris, and for a short time he edited the newspaper “Teataja”.

Alongside this he painted. He was self-taught, learning on journeys through Europe and America, and worked in oil. His pictures were shown at Estonian exhibitions in Munich and Hamburg, and in 1964–1965 at the Stockholm salons at Liljevalchs. To my mind this side of him is seldom mentioned because the offices stand next to it, but he is listed among artists.

In 1971 his book “A Diplomat’s Chronicle” (Diplomaadi kroonika), on the years 1938–1944, was published in Lund; it later appeared in Finnish.

Aleksander Warma died in Stockholm on 23 December 1970. The funeral service was held on 16 January 1971 in St Jacob’s Church. On 24 August 2002 he was reburied in Metsakalmistu cemetery in Tallinn. In 2008 a memorial stone was set up at his birthplace in Viinistu, and in 2015 Estonia issued a stamp for his 125th anniversary.