„Veel üks unistus“: interjöörimaalingud ja tapeedid astronoomimaja sisekujunduses läbi aegade

The title quotes a letter from the then-university architect Johann Wilhelm Krause (1757–1828), where he talks about his dreams related to the construction of the observatory, which was completed in 1810, after many disputes and reconsiderations, on Toome Hill. The Astronomer’s House was built next to the observatory ten years later. In May 2023, extensive reconstruction work began in the Astronomer’s House, which was completed in May 2024. Interior walls are now decorated with reconstructed stencil patterns, and layers of paintings and wallpapers from the 19th century are conserved and exhibited. The first residents of the Astronomer’s House from 1821 were Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve (1793–1864) with his wife Emilie and their children. The Struve family lived in the house from its construction until 1839. Struve handed over the observatory and its complex to Professor Karl Eduard Senff (1810–49) in 1839. Senff, in turn, handed over the observatory to Struve’s successor one year later, in 1840. The new professor of astronomy and director of the observatory was Johann Heinrich Mädler (1794–1874), who lived in the Astronomer’s House with his poet wife Minna until 1864. After that, the director of the observatory until 1872 was the previous observer, Thomas Clausen (1801–85). During the times of Struve, Senff, Mädler, and Clausen, the walls and ceilings of the rooms were covered and decorated with paint, using lime or distemper colours, and the interiors were decorated with ornamental paintings (Figures 5-8, and 12-13). During the renovation in 2023–24, the paintings from the Struve and Mädler periods were conserved (Figures 7-8), and stenciled ornaments were reconstructed in the office rooms (Figures 9-11). In 1872, Peter Carl Ludwig Schwarz (1822–1894) became the new director of the observatory; his wife was the painter Julie Wilhelmine Hagen-Schwarz (1824–1902). During the period from the 1870s to the 1890s, the walls were covered with modern wallpapers that had become accessible to ordinary citizens by that time. In 1894, Grigori Lewitsky (1852–1918), a professor at Kharkov University, was appointed director of the observatory. He immediately began modernizing and refurbishing the observatory; among these changes, the astronomer’s residence was insulated from the inside in 1895. During the renovation in 2023–24, an average of four different layers of wallpaper were revealed under this layer. The last layer of wood-imitating wallpaper from the Schwarz period in the 1890s is now conserved and exhibited in the Astronomer’s House (Figure 14). In 1908, Konstantin Pokrovski (1868–1945) became the director of the observatory. The first two decades of the 20th century are fragmented in terms of interior decoration, as little has been preserved, or the decoration was sparse, as the Astronomer’s House was no longer used as a single-family residence but was expanded for teaching, and the building was divided into apartments. Taavet Rootsmäe (1885–1959) was appointed as the first Estonian director of the observatory at 1919, and he remained in this position until 1948. A typical stencil pattern from the 1920s, which decorated the walls of the astronomer and astrophysicist Ernst Öpik’s (1893- 1985) apartment in the western part of the building, was preserved. The stencil pattern from Öpik’s time was reconstructed on the wall of the large hall in 2024 (Figure 7, pattern with hearts). During World War II, the observatory and its complex were heavily damaged, followed by extensive restoration work. The typical roller pattern of the 1940s was used on the walls of the second-floor manager’s office, which was Rootsmäe’s office then. Some wallpapers from the Soviet era (1960–1980), printed in Estonian and Riga factories, were found on the astronomer Peeter Traat´s apartment walls (Öpik’s former apartment). In re-independent Estonia, modern vinyl and latex-based materials (paints and wallpapers) began to be used. From 1997 to 2011, the AHHAA Science Center operated in the Astronomer’s House, and later University of Tartu museum staff used the rooms as office space. Before renovation, the house stood empty, and from 2024 the freshly renovated astronomers’ residence became the home of the University of Tartu’s personnel department.