History

From history

Taageperra or – as the name of this place once sounded – Vaokülla (1509: Wafencul) became the site of a manor already before the Livonian War, probably around 1550.

From very early on, this estate lying within the boundaries of Helme parish was linked to the noble Rehbinder family, and it remained in their hands even in Polish and Swedish times. Thus, in the 1630s, for example, the owner of this knight’s manor, then assessed as being five ploughlands in size, was Rittmeister Heinrich Rehbinder, then his son Bernhard Rehbinder, and then the latter’s son, Major General Johann von Rehbinder, who at the same time was the owner of Udriku manor in Virumaa. Vaoküla manor, or – as it is written in all the older German-language documents – Hoff Wagenküll, remained in the hands of the Rehbinders until 1674.

Then Johann von Rehbinder’s nephew Wilhelm Christoph von Rehbinder sold it for 9900 thalers to the councillor of the land Otto von Stackelberg, who came from Jõe manor in Tartumaa.

It was precisely after the Stackelbergs that Taagepera received its present Estonian name – Takelbergi or Takelberge, as it is written, for example, in the third volume of August Wilhelm Hupel’s “Topographical Notes”, published in 1782, or Tagaper, as can be found in Count Ludwig August Mellin’s “Atlas of Livonia” of 1797.

In the time of the Stackelbergs, especially in the last decades of the 18th century, this manor experienced its first true period of prosperity, and the local population, which in the meantime, after the trials of the Great Northern War, had shrunk to 340, grew again to over 800. For example, in 1782 there were 61 people registered in Taagepera manor as servants alone: valets, maids, kitchen workers, stablemen, coachmen, gamekeepers, gardeners, washerwomen, etc.

Taagepera remained in the hands of the Stackelbergs until the autumn of 1796, when Major Otto Fabian von Stackelberg pawned it for ninety years for 105,000 silver roubles to Major Friedrich Joachim von Oettingen. The latter, however, let the manor go bankrupt, and in November 1819 it was bought by the lord of Riidaja manor, Bernhard Heinrich von Stryk.

From then on, Taagepera remained in the hands of the Stryks. This was a family from Westphalia who in the 13th century were known there under the name Vogt von Elspe, but who, upon moving to Livonia in the 15th century, took the name Stryk. Over the centuries they have held a number of manors here, and Bernhard Heinrich von Stryk was particularly successful in this respect: in the end, in addition to Riidaja and Taagepera, the manors of Suure-Kõpu, Tihemetsa and Kärsu also belonged to him. Thus he rose to become one of the richest manor owners in Livonia, being lord at the same time to roughly 3800 peasants.

However, Bernhard Heinrich von Stryk himself did not come to live in Taagepera, but appointed one of his sons, Magnus von Stryk, as the lord of the manor here. Later, in the years 1863–1912, this estate stood in the name of Magnus von Stryk’s only son Bernhard. Data from that period describe Taagepera as a manor farm on a rather average level. For example, the manor house was only a one-storey wooden building; there were about twenty outbuildings, but most of those too were wooden. At that time the manor had 6848 tiinu of land; there was also a brickyard and a sawmill, as well as two flour mills and a dairy, and every year on 6 September a big fair was held near Ala tavern.

The manor remained more or less in this state until the fire of 1904, in which the manor house was completely destroyed, and although officially the manor still belonged to Bernhard von Stryk at that time, the task of erecting a new building on the site of the burnt manor house fell on his son Hugo von Stryk, born in 1860, who had already been holding Taagepera as a tenant since 1886. He had a new Art Nouveau manor house with a mansard floor built in its place. Unfortunately, the new manor house also burned to the ground just a couple of years after it was completed.

It is not known whether it was the idea of Hugo von Stryk or rather of his art-loving wife Anna von Stryk to choose as architect the undoubtedly gifted but at that time still inexperienced Otto Wildau (1873–1942). In any case, it is to this man that we owe the fact that the new manor heart was able to rise in Taagepera as exceptionally stylistically unified and impressive. Originally from Berlin, he had only moved to Livonia in 1903, founding his own architectural office in Riga that same year. Thus Taagepera Castle, which he began building in 1907 and completed in 1912, was in a way a trial work for him in these parts. Since it turned out so successfully, he later designed other projects here too. For example, in 1910 the Holdre manor house next to Taagepera was completed according to his drawings; in the years 1910–1912 the Peetri manor house near Viljandi was built according to his designs; in 1909–1912 he was involved in the development of Illuste manor near Virtsu. In Latvia, the manor houses of Veckārķi and Bukase, among others, were designed by him.