The house was built by Johan Lasn, a member of Estonian Provincial Assembly elected from Pärnu and a long-time chairman of the Pärnu Farmers’ Association and the Pärnu Economic Union.

Johan Lasn

Johan Lasn (1861-1930), born in the village of Ridalepa in Sauga Parish, the son of a farmer and parish mayor, worked briefly as a parish school teacher in Papsaare as a young man and then went on to study at Tõstamaa Manor to become a manor manager. Not finding a position as a manor manager, he served as a parish clerk in Seli, Pootsi and Kastna for 20 years. In 1905, he settled in Pärnu and, with the capital he had accumulated over the years, rented the Pärli Cattle Manor on the outskirts of the city (the territory that today is under the airport and the industrial village of North-Western Pärnu). He took part in social activities in the city and was elected chairman of the Pärnu Farmers’ Association.

In 1910, a group of active farmers in the region gathered, and were concerned about the pricing policy and the limited assortment of the existing large Pärnu trading companies2. In particular, the high price of artificial fertilisers sold through several intermediaries had proved to be a problem. It was decided to set up a joint company capable of ordering larger quantities of goods at a lower price directly from producers. The Pärnu Economic Union was founded in 1911 and soon grew into the largest cooperative enterprise in Estonia, with its own shops and warehouses in the city, and auxiliary shops in Pärnu County. Johan Lasn became the long-standing chairman of the union.

In 1917, Lasn was elected as a delegate to the Estonian Provincial Assembly and, as its oldest member, had the honour of opening the first Assembly. In Pärnu, he helped to organise the proclamation of the Republic of Estonia from the balcony of the Endla Society House on 23 February 1918. According to his family, he himself had stood on the balcony when another delegate to the Provincial Assembly, Hugo Kuusner, read out the “Manifesto to all the peoples of Estonia” in public.

Almost at the same time, he bought the former property of Anna Rudakova on Supeluse Street in Pärnu. Keeping the old shop on the corner of Karusselli Street, he decided to build a multi-apartment house on the other side of the plot. The building project was prepared by architect Erich Wolffeldt and signed on 1 July 1920. The Art Nouveau building was completed by the following summer.

The apartments in the modern and well-located house were suitable for renting out. Jaan Miländer, the head of the Women’s Clinic of the University of Tartu, rented a flat here for his family for the summer of 1927. Later, the family of balneologist Voldemar Vadi spent summers here for many years. However, neither man was in Pärnu just for holidaying.

Professor Jaan Miländer
Jaan Miländer (1866-1940), from Saarde Parish in Pärnu County, went to secondary school in Pärnu and entered the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tartu in 1887. He defended his doctoral degree in gynaecology in 1896 and worked for many years as the head of the ward at the central hospital of the Penza Governorate before World War II. In 1920, he was invited to the newly established University of Estonia in the independent Republic of Estonia to take office as a professor of gynaecology and obstetrics.

In 1927, when the bathing establishment of mud and water baths was reopened in Pärnu, the city doctor Dr Jaan Kukk invited Jaan Miländer and the dean of the Faculty of Medicine Konstantin Konik to be medical directors at the establishment. The city government did not pay them a salary, but offered them the opportunity to receive patients in the bathing institution’s building and to use all the departments of the mud baths, which could provide more than 300 procedures a day. The professors thus combined vacation and practice, receiving patients either in the building of the bathing establishment or in an apartment rented for the family who were brought to Pärnu for holidays. In 1930, Konstantin Konik was replaced as the second doctor at the Bathing Institution by Voldemar Vadi, the head of the internal medicine clinic in Tartu, who also rented an apartment in Lasn’s house.

Balneologist Voldemar Vadi
Voldemar Vadi (1891-1951) was born in Võru County as the son of a gardener in the Kooraste Manor and graduated from the Hugo Treffner Private Gymnasium before studying medicine at the University of Tartu. To finance his studies, he earned extra money by playing the violin in the Vanemuine Symphony Orchestra. In 1924, he became a doctor of medicine and, in the following year, head of the internal medicine clinic.

In addition to his daily treatment of patients in the bathing establishment, Voldemar Vadi focused on scientific research into mud therapy in Pärnu. In the summer of 1931, he set up a laboratory in the building of the bathing establishment, where he carried out experiments on the clinical and physiological effects of mud. In the following year, he published a research paper in which he gave a comprehensive overview of both the activities of the bathing establishment and the effects of the procedures offered. In the summer of 1935 and 1936, the head of state, Konstantin Päts, was treated at the Pärnu bathing establishment. The rheumatism in his legs was treated by Voldemar Vadi with mud procedures and massage. The treatment was very effective.

Vadi and Miländer worked side by side until the summer of 1939 in the same rhythm – arriving in Pärnu in mid-June with their families, performing procedures in the mud baths and receiving patients. This pre-war summer would remain the last for the time being. Miländer died the following spring in Tartu and was buried in Raadi Cemetery. Vadi continued his scientific work during the Soviet era. In time, he became the most respected balneologist in Estonia. In 1946, he became the member of the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR.

Natsionalisation

After Johan Lasn died in 1936, the plot was inherited by his widow, Minna Lasn (1867-1946)10. After the war, in 1950, when the houses were expropriated, the property was owned by their daughter Elsa Adelheid Lasn (1897-1985). The apartments were mainly occupied by families of Soviet army officers. Elsa remained a paid janitor for the Housing Authority. Her sister, Olga Auguste Lasn (1895-1985), was unemployed and dependent on her. In later years, the sisters were said to have lived on the second floor of the shop. A particularly memorable figure was the tall and devout Olga, who continued wearing her long white robe during the Soviet era, her head wrapped in a white headscarf.

The house was returned to its rightful owners in 1993. It has since been resold and is today awaiting renovation.