The earliest owner of the house was August Frommhold Lorenzsonn (1836-1905), a Pärnu town clerk and archivist, who had a small one-storey building erected here (the first floor of the seaward part of the present building). August Lorenzsonn was born in 1836 in Pärnu. His father was Caspar Franz Lorenzsonn (1811-1880), a long-time churchwarden of the Elizabeth congregation (1830-1875) and editor of the Perno Postimees newspaper after Jannsen. 

Caspar was one of the key figures in early Estonian literary history. As a young man, he translated and published a true bestseller in 1839 – a story translated into the Pärnu dialect, “The Life of Jenowewa“. This 22-page little book is essentially the first fiction publication in Estonian. The book was printed in the Marquardt printing house in Pärnu. Caspar’s son August Frommhold started his apprenticeship as a printer in the same printing house, which was now run by Friedrich Wilhelm Borm (1812-1881). However, he followed in his father’s (and his father’s brothers’) footsteps and became a churchwarden-schoolteacher in Audru, near Pärnu. 

In 1874, he resigned from his position as churchwarden of Audru and took up a position as town clerk in Pärnu. In 1896, he sold the house to Baroness Alma Stael von Holstein (1852-?), daughter of the manor owner Heinrich Stael von Holstein, who resold the house just a couple of years later. 

Photo studio in the yard 

In 1909, the studio photographer Homann from Pärnu became the owner of the house. Wladislav [Ladislaus] Homann (1855-1912) was born in the town of Białystok in what is now Poland and had previously worked in Riga and Kuressaare. In 1905, he had received permission from the governor to open a photographic studio in Arthur Pusill’s house (the building of the Hotel Bristol, entrance from Ringi Street) in Pärnu. 

Façade drawing of the Homann’s summer studio (view from the street) in 1911, detail from plan EAA.3569.2.411.1 

He had the building on Supeluse Street rebuilt to the shape we know today, with a second floor and a larger volume facing the street. The project dates back to 1910. The project to build a vaulted laundry room in the courtyard, to which a glass-roofed photo studio was later added as an annex, also dates back to the same year. 

After Homann’s death in 1912, the house was inherited by his widow Emma (1861-1930), his son Wladislav (born 1895), a chemical engineer, and his daughter Wanda (1895). 

Konstantin Päts’s sons Leo and Viktor photographed in Homann’s studio (ERA.1278.1.446.20). On the right is the back of the cardboard of Homann’s photographs with an advertisement indicating that his summer studio was located on Supeluse Street (PäMu F 3117-1) 

The house was bought from the heirs in 1918 by Erich Andreas Glabe (1886-?). His father was Carl Demetrius Glabe (1851-1910), a merchant of the second Guild of Pärnu. The family lived in “Glaabe’s house on Glaabe square” (now Vabaduse Park). Erich’s uncle, Johann (1859-1917), was also a merchant who ran a tobacco and alcohol shop in the former Specht shop premises next to the Town Hall. Erich Glabe himself also became a merchant, running a shop selling all kinds of technical equipment and household appliances, first at Nikolai 10 and from 1912, at Rüütli 51 opposite the Endla Society House. 

In 1935, the house was bought from Erich Glabe’s widow, Anna Glabe, by its last pre-war owner, Reinhold Isak from Viru County. He himself moved into an apartment in the courtyard house soon after and rented out four large and prestigious apartments in the house on the street. Jewish merchants from Pärnu, Leib Kahn (1901-1941) and Jeremiah Krakusen, together with their mother and brother, found a home here. In 1938, Krakusen’s sister Frieda’s family, together with the head of the family, Doctor Schmuel Haitov (1909 – 1984), moved into his apartment on the first floor. 

Founder of Pärnu Polyclinic 

a practicing doctor, he saw patients in the spacious apartment here. In the first year of communism, he became the first head physician of Pärnu Polyclinic, founded on 20 November 1940. The house was opened on Lõuna Street, in the former retirement home of the German Nikolai congregation, which became empty after the Germans left in 1939. 

Announcement in the newspaper Uus Eesti Pärnu Uudised, 29 June 1939 

Dr Schmuel Haitov, Head Physician of Pärnu City Polyclinic 1940-1941, negative. Estonian Health Museum collection THMF 2842 

While Haitov’s parents, who came from a Jewish family of Pärnu origin, perished in the Holocaust during the subsequent German occupation, Schmuel Haitov, his wife and their young son escaped to the rear of the Soviet Union, where he spent World War II as a military doctor in the Estonian National Army units of the Red Army. Only a couple of days after the capture of Pärnu, on 26 September 1944, he arrived in his hometown and was appointed head of the health department of the war-ravaged city of Pärnu on the same day. A highly respected and recognised doctor in Pärnu, who was awarded the title of Honoured Doctor of the Estonian SSR in 1976, died in Pärnu in 1984 and was buried in the Jewish Cemetery of the Pärnu Alevi Cemetery. 

Nationalisation 

The Soviet authorities nationalised the house from the last pre-war owner, Reinhold Isak. Isak died in 1941 and was buried in the Alevi Cemetery. Immediately after the war, the building was used by the Red Army to house soldiers, like most of the larger buildings on Supeluse Street. Later, the housing authority rented it out as apartments. 

Today, the two-storey house, originally with four, now with six apartments, is relatively well preserved. Fortunately, the last Soviet-era major renovation ensured the historic wooden decor was preserved. In addition to the house on the street, the courtyard house with its vaulted laundry room and the apartment on top of it has also survived. The former photographic studio in the courtyard was converted into a living space during the Soviet period.