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Hella Maria Wuolijoki (1886-1954) - original surname Murrik - wrote also as Juhani Tervapää |
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Estonian-born Finnish
writer, prominent playwright, and Marxist, who had a successful career
in business. Outside Finland, Hella Wuolijoki is known because of her
association with Bertolt Brecht. Her
famous literary friends also included Maxim
Gorky. Wuolijoki was a
personality of many contradictions, a mild feminist but radical in
politics, a cosmopolitan intellectual who had a pronounced admiration
for old-fashioned country people. After Aleksis Kivi and William
Shakespeare, she has been Finland's most often performed dramatic
writer. Among Wuolijoki's most loved social comedies is Juurakon Hulda
(1937), which tells of a clever country girl, who works as a
parlourmaid in a chauvinist household and struggles her way to the top. HULDA No doubt a ring even from you would be suitable for a wise young maiden's collection. . . . So you actually believe that I want a ring from you? Your fiancée, little Miss Juurakko! Never, do you hear, absolutely never! For seven years, with your stranger's eyes, you've been measuring me in this household as if I were an unfamiliar horse and I've listened for your footsteps like a madwoman. And I don't know why in heaven's name I care for you! Your politics are narrow-minded and two-faced! I, myself, have wept with joy when you've been good to me and other people at times. Maybe I like you because, despite it all, you're a good person. But I don't want to become your wife. I want to live my own life. I want to fight on behalf of those people from amongst whom I have come. I want to smash this damned wall which has risen up before me, myself. (from Hulda Juurakko, translated by Ritva Poom, in Modern Drama by Women 1880s-1930s: An International Anthology, edited by Katherine E. Kelly, New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 252) Hella Wuolijoki was born Ella Murrik in Valga, Estonia. Her
father,
Ernst Murrik, worked as a teacher and run also a bookshop. Kadri
Kogamägi, Wuolijoki's mother, was a farmer's daughter. At home the
family spoke German, but in the wake of national awakening Estonian was
used in conversation. Wuolijoki received secondary education in Tartu
and continued her studies at the University of Helsinki, receiving her
M.A. in 1908. While still at school she published writings in Estonian
periodicals. At the university Wuolijoki considered an academic career but the general strike of 1905 awaked her political consciousness and turned her into a socialist. In her autobiography Yliopistovuoden Helsingissä (1945) Wuolijoki wrote: "We did not know what was to come, but it could only be something better, because the entire basis and rulers of life were changing. The people had taken power into their own hands – and surely it would know what to do with it and how to proceed after all humanity had had to suffer. I stood with Hannes on Observatory Hill, and we looked down at the city and the harbour, where the weak light of a candle flickered here and there, and the masts and chimneys were outlined against the sky. And we believed in life and in the power of the people." (translated by David McDuff, Helsinki: A Literary Companion, edited by Hildi Hawkins and Soila Lehtonen, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2000, pp. 98-99) In 1907 she married Sulo Wuolijoki (1881-1957), a member
of parliament, and took Finnish nationality. Their marriage was
officially dissolved in 1924, but she kept the old Finnish
surname and paid some money for it. For a period Wuolijoki planned to
marry Commodore Harold Grenfell, with
whom she had started an affair in 1917. Their passionate correspondence
continued for many years. Sulo Wuolijoki knew the Communist leader Otto
Ville Kuusinen, the
poet Eino Leino, and had participated in the translation of
Internationale into Finnish. After the Civil War he was imprisoned. His
account of the 1918 events were published in 1920. As a writer he did
not gain the fame of Hella. In the 1910s Wuolijoki established herself as a businesswoman. She worked as the director of Carelia Timber co, and Aunuksen puuliike from 1923 to 1931. At the same time, Wuolijoki's apartment and estate at Marlebäck in southern Finland was a meeting place for leftist intellectuals and politicians. From 1931 to 1938 she was chairman of the board of Suomen Nafta, an oil company. Wuolijoki's first play, Talulapsed (1912, The children of the house), written in Estonian, was accepted by theatres
in both Estonia and Finland (both under Russia rule at that time), but the performances were forbidden by
czarist authorities. At the age of 45 she devoted herself to writing
and published her works in Finnish. In the 1930s she wrote several
plays, among them Ministeri ja kommunisti (1933, Minister and
Communist) and Laki ja järjestys (1933, Law and Order), set
in Helsinki during the 1918 Civil War. The male lead of Law and
Order
asked to be released from his role. He did not accept the main idea of
the play, as he saw it, that the Reds entered the war because of
ideology, whereas the whites were required by the law to do so. This
play was banned by the Ministry of Justice. SENATOR (Putting the last papers into his briefcase) I presume that we are the last White woman and White man in this building. Wuolijoki
had remained neutral during the war, but both of
these
early plays provoked polemic in the right-wing press for their leftist
sympathies. To continue with dramas she took a pseudonym, Juhani
Tervapää, and began a series of plays about a rural family, the people
of Niskavuori, which gained a huge popularity. In 1937, when Wuolijoki
went to Moscow, she met Otto Wille Kuusinen, and gave him a signed copy
of her play Niskavuoren naiset
(1936, The Women of Niskavuori). The head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezov,
fabricated a story that she worked for the British intelligence. (Suomensyöjä Otto Wille Kuusinen by Antero Uitto, [Helsinki]: Paasilinna, 2013, p. 243) When the German writer Bertolt Brecht's arrived in Finland in 1940, he settled as a guest at Marlebäck, Wuolijoki's mansion. From Finland Brecht continued to Moscow and to the United States. Wuolijoki co-authored with him the play Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti in 1940, which Brecht continued to develop. The play premiered in Zürich in 1948; in Finland it was seen first time in 1965. Partly the character of Puntila was inspired by the cousin of Wuolijoki's husband and his bumblings and stumblings during the prohibition era. Puntila is a rich farmer, who is generous and kind when drunk, and selfish when sober. Puntila tries to arrange a marriage between his daughter Eva and a diplomat. The plan fails and Puntila then deices that his chauffeur and drinking companion Matti marries Eva. Matti is not happy about the idea and when Eva fails his test, Matti leaves Puntila and joins his working-class comrades. Wuolijoki had written in the 1930s another play and a film script from the same material, Sahanpuruprinsessa, but Brecht 's work is considered superior to it. Brecht summarized the plot: "adventures of a finnish landowner and his chauffeur. He is only human when he is drunk, since that is when he forgets his own interests." Wuolijoki also worked with Brecht on Judith von Shimoda, based on Yozo Yamamoto's play Okichi. During WW II, Wuolijoki was involved in secret, unofficial
diplomatic negotiations for peace with the Soviet Union after a visit
from a Russian parachutist, Kerttu Nuorteva. She was arrested, charged
with treason, and condemned to death – a sentence later commuted
to life imprisonment. Before she was released, Wuolijoki spent the time
productively and wrote parts of her memoirs. Wuolijoki had good
personal connections in European left-wing circles – her sister
was the wife of Palme Dutt, the British Communist leader. She was a
confidante of Boris Yartsev, a Soviet diplomat, and she also knew Mme Alexandra Kollontai, one of the
legendary figures of the Bolshevik Revolution. Wuolijoki's role as a NKVD's (the Soviet Secret Police) trustee was known by the Finnish Foreign Minister Väinö Tanner, who sent her to Sweden during the Winter War (1939-40). Wuolijoki met two NKVD agents, Andrei Grauer and Boris Yartsev, and Kollontai in Stockholm's Grand Hotel. Wuolijoki offered her services as a go-between in Finnish-Soviet peace negotiations. "It was, on the face of it, a bizarre idea." (Max Jakobson in Finland Survived: An Account of the Finnish-Soviet Winter War, 1939-1940, Otava Publishing Company, 1984, p. 208) Decades later the film director Matti Kassila planned to make a film about Wuolijoki and Russian spies, but the author's daughter, Vappu Tuomioja, an influential politician, did not approve the idea. Instead Kassila made the sixth Niskavuori movie. After the war years Wuolijoki joined the Finnish Communist Party and was elected in 1946 to the parliament. As a member of a Finnish delegation to the Sovien Union, she met Stalin in 1946, and wrote admiringly of him in a letter: "Good God, he is the greatest person in the world!" Between the years 1945 and 1949, Wuolijoki was the director of the Finnish Broadcasting Company; she was dismissed from the post in June 1949. During the period, called "the years of danger" because of the fear of a Communist takeover, Wuolijoki opened doors to leftist journalists and also started radio's political discussion programs. However, in general the broadcast policy did not undergo a radical change from conservative to radical. Especially close to Wuolijoki's heart was concert music. Acting against the tastes of the general public, she banned Hiski Salomaa's most popular song, the rowdy 'Lännen lokari.' Works by Gogol, Ibsen, O'Neill, Gorky, and Brech were adapted for the radio. Wuolijoki herself composed 29 episodes of the series The Workman's Family, created as a counterpoint to the bourgeois The Suominen Family. Wuolijoki wrote 16 plays. Of these Juurakon Hulda (Hulda Juurakko), published by K. J. Gummerus, came out under the pseudonym Juhani Tervapää. Set during the Depression, it tells of a young woman from a tenant farm, who has come to Helsinki in in search of work. She is hired by Judge Soratie as a parlourmaid. In the world governed by men, from her humble beginnings, she eventually rises to Soratie's equal. The play was the basis for the Oscar-winning romantic comedy The Farmer's Daughter (1947). The story told of a frank maid (Loretta Young) who upsets the life of a ambitious politician (Joseph Cotten). In the television series, produced by Screen Gems (1963-66), Inger Stevens played the title role. The Finish film version, directed by Valentin Vaala and starring Tauno Palo and Irma Seikkula, was Suomi-Filmi's most profitable production of the late 1930s. Paramount bought the rights of the play in the same year. Wuolijoki's major work is the family saga Niskavuori, partly based on the history of her own family at the Wuolijoki estate in Sahalahti. It includes five plays: Niskavuoren naiset, Niskavuoren leipä, Niskavuoren nuori emäntä, Niskavuoren Heta ja Entäs nyt, Niskavuori? The first, Niskavuoren naiset, premiered in 1936 at the Helsinki Folk Theatre; it was an immediate box office hit. Niskavuori series depicts the country house Niskavuori and its struggle of power between old, strong-minded women and the new generations, from the 1880s to the 1940s. Loviisa, who controls Niskavuori, is the dominating figure throughout the story. Her son Aarne has left his wife Martta for a schoolteacher, Ilona, but returns then to take care of the farm. However, Niskavuori's fate rests on the power of its wise women. Despite the popularity of the Niskavuori series, and cultural importance as "the nation's common memory," only Loviisa from the central characters has acquired an iconic place in Finnish consciousness – the Niskavuori matron is a concept of authority, determination and strenght. VANHAEMÄNTÄ Kuule nyt, näillä työväen palkoilla on mahdotonta pitää Niskavuorta koossa. Hella Wuolijoki died on February 2, 1954, in Helsinki. Niskavuori plays have been successfully adapted into screen, into a kind of
long Finnish Gone with the Wind.
In Germany. Aarne Niskavuori (1954,
Brot vom Eigenen Land), based on Niskavuoren
leipä
and directed by Edvin Laine, was compared at the 1954 Berlin Film
Festival with Heimat films about place, belonging and identity. Niskavuoren naiset
was staged in London in 1937 under the title Women of Property
(known also as The Women of Niskavuori).
The production ran only a few performances. When the play opened
in 1938 in Hamburg in Germany, its themes of Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil) weighted
more than Wuolijoki's political beliefs. Die Frauen auf Niskavuori
was closed after fourteen performances. Nowadays, in the
English speaking world, The Women of Niskavuori
is considered a minor play by a largely forgotten playwright.
Wuolijoki's grandson, the Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja, published in
2006 a book on her and her sister Salme Pekkala, entitled Häivähdys punaista (A Delicate
Shade of Pink). For further reading: Tutkijan testamentti: kolmen kovan naisen matkassa: Minna Canth, Maria Jotuni, Hella Wuolijoki by Jukka Ammondt (2023); Niskavuoren henki: viljapelloilta valkokankaalle by Erkki Wuolijoki (2015); Playing "Nordic": The Women of Niskavuori, Agri/Culture, and Imagining Finland on the Third Reich Stage by Hana Worthen (2007); Brecht in Finnland: Studien zu Leben und Werk 1940-1941 by Hans Peter Neureuter (2007); Häivähdys punaista: Hella Wuolijoki ja hänen sisarensa Salme Pekkala vallankumouksen palveluksessa by Erkki Tuomioja (2006); Performative Histories, Foundational Fictions: Gender and Sexuality in Niskavuori Films by Anu Koivunen (2003); Kaikessa mukana: Hella Wuolijoki ja hänen näytelmänsä by Pirkko Koski (2000); Portraits of Courage; Plays by Finnish Women, ed. by S. E. Wilmer (1997); Sulo, Hella ja Vappuli by Vappu Tuomioja (1997); Kansallisgalleria: suuret suomalaiset, Vol. 3, ed. by Allan Tiitta et al. (1996), Teatterista valkokankaalle by Jukka Ammondt (1986); 'Hella Wuolijoki' by George C. Schoolfiedn, in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, Vol. 5, edited by Stanley Hochman (1984); 'Wuolijoki's and Bertolt Brecht's Politization of the Volksstück' by M. Deschner, in Bertolt Brecht: Political Theory and Literary Practice, ed. by H. Heinen and B.N. Weber, (1980); Niskavuoren talosta Juurakon torppaan by Jukka Ammondt (1980); 'Hella Wuolijoki: A Woman of Contrasts' by Pekka Lounela, in Books From Finland (1979); Uuno Kailaasta Aila Meriluotoon, ed. by Toivo Pekkanen and Reino Rauanheimo (1947) Selected works:
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