More than a hundred years old, the lace-fronted tenement house at the beginning of Supeluse Street has been meticulously renovated with attention to detail, with only the proud and tall tower with its tin roof still awaiting restoration.

The house was built by Aleksander Blumenfeldt in several stages. The project for the two-storey house dates back to 1900, and the project for its substantial extension dates back to 1905.

In 1908, the next owner of the property was Arnold Marsching (1851-?), a merchant of the Pärnu II Guild. His father was the Pärnu merchant August Demetrius Marsching (1819-1891) and his grandfather was the master carpenter Johann Wilhelm Marsching (1767 – 1853), who came to Pärnu from Nuremberg. The family was wealthy, and several houses in the Old Town had been passed down to their heirs. In 1920, Arnold Marching and his wife, Lydia, moved to Germany. Before that, the house on Supeluse Street was sold and initially bought by Swiss citizen Alfred Niklaus. From him, in turn, it was bought by the wealthy merchant Johann Aspe from Ülejõe in 1919.

The Aspe family originated from the Räägu cattle manor of Sauga Manor. They worked their way up to become well-known merchants in Pärnu. Johann and his brother Martin ran a shop and a restaurant on Jänesselja road (Tallinna road) and the intersection of (Vana-)Rääma streets. Johann was also a shareholder in the merchant ship “Mina”, which had belonged to the Ülejõe group of businessmen since 1928. Its subsequent fate is a sad one − it was torpedoed by a German submarine in December 1939, thus becoming the first casualty of the Estonian merchant fleet in World War II.

Johann Aspe died of a heart attack in September 1931. The property at Supeluse 6 was inherited by his wife, Kristine Aspe (1889-1939), who soon remarried to Johannes Viilberg (Est. Viljas). Kristine and Johannes Viljas lived in the same house, in apartment 5, while the rest of the apartments in the house were rented out, both to long-term tenants and short-term holidaymakers.

Swedish summer prince

In 1939, a divorced, cheerful 50-year-old retired captain from Sweden, Arthur Florin, a gymnastics teacher by profession, spent a month and a half here in the summer. That year, at the traditional summer queens and princes contest, he was chosen as summer prince at the Pärnu Summer Casino (Ammende Villa). As the newspaper describes, he was chosen by a large majority because he was a quite rich and vivacious bachelor who had captivated the hearts of the fairer sex in Pärnu.

On his way home, however, Florin fell overboard from the Pärnu-Stockholm liner “Estonia” and drowned. According to eyewitnesses, he may have been hit by a rush of madness on the ship deck and, a little drunk, he suddenly threw off his coat and told his friends he was going to jump into the sea for a swim. And although a lifebuoy was immediately thrown after him and the ship was stopped, the man could not be saved because he had “sunk to the bottom like a stone”.

Pärnu Forest Management District Office

The apartment on the first floor of the building had been leased to the Pärnu Forest Management, where the forestry district office and the forestry chief’s official apartment were located. The “Forestry Lord” was Bernhard Aleksander Tiismann (Est. Tuiskvere, 1901-1983), certified as a forester before the war. Tiismann, originally from Pühalepa, Hiiumaa, graduated from the Forestry Department of the University of Tartu in 1925. He has published scientific articles on silviculture and forest use as well as the history of forestry in Estonia. In Pärnu, he lived in the official apartment next to his office with his wife Meta Tuiskvere and their children Hillar (born 1930) and Ingrid (born 1933).

It was the only house on Supeluse Street to be damaged in World War II by the explosion of a bomb dropped next to it. The tragic moment has been recalled by Ingrid, the daughter of the Tuiskvere family, who was at home at the time. Although the building escaped a direct hit, all the windows and part of the outer wall were broken. The family emigrated to Germany in 1944, where Tuiskvere worked as a lecturer and researcher at the Eberswald Forest Academy and at the Lübeck Estonian Forestry Technical School, which was founded on his initiative. Bernhard Tuiskvere died in Sweden in 1983.

Nationalisation of the house

The building was expropriated by the Soviet authorities from Johannes Viljas, a widower. The renting of apartments was managed by the Housing Authority. In 1969, the building underwent a major renovation. The house received plumbing, and the residents who had previously used communal kitchens got kitchens and bathrooms in their apartments.

After the restoration of independence, the building was returned to its rightful owner and is now owned by various families as apartment properties. The first-floor apartment was converted into retail space in 1998. A massage parlour operated here in the 2000s. At the end of 2010, Edgar Maier and Reio Tilk opened the popular fast food restaurant “Poisi Eine” here.