The simple wooden building is one of the oldest buildings on this side of the street, which is also indicated by its distance from the street line. The house was built around 1850 by the miller Blumenfeldt (1826-1912). 

Tõnis Blumenfeldt was born as the fourth child of Andres Blumenfeldt (1786-1836), a miller of the Enniko Mill of the Roigu Cattle Manor, which belonged to the Tammiste Manor. In 1833, the family moved to Pärnu, and Andres became a homeowner and a city resident. His son Tõnis also grew up to be a miller − as a young man, he ran a mill at the other end of Karusselli Street in Pärnu. In 1849, he sold it to Gottlieb Madisson, and that’s probably when the new mill with a dwelling house was completed on Supeluse Street, on a large plot of land that at the time also extended to the other side of Pärna Street, which had not yet been built. In 1852, Tõnis married Luise Mathilde Erikson, who was born in the Räägu Manor next to Sauga Manor. 

Tõnis Blumenfeldt became a highly respected man in Pärnu. In 1878, he was elected as member of the town council, and it was probably at that time that he began to prefer ‘Anton’, the German equivalent of ‘Tõnis’, as his first name. 

Façade drawing of the house in the 1985 survey report. 

Miller Anton (Tõnis) Blumenfeldt, photo at Geni.com, personal entry, owned by Mirja Ots.

Printed postcard from the beginning of the 20th century, view of the Blumenfeldt Mill from Pärna Street.

Windmill on Supeluse Street 

Pärnu was called the city of 15 mills even in the early 20th century, including both large wind-powered sawmills and flour mills. There were also small post mills in the suburbs. The biggest wave of windmill construction took place in the mid-18th century, when the city’s merchant community started to transport timber out of the city via Pärnu Port. To this end, many large windmills and sawmills were erected in Pärnu that were built in the Netherlands and assembled here by Dutch craftsmen. The last of those built at that time, the Bochnsack or Rothberg mill on the Sauga River, burned down in 1921. 

In the early 20th century, the Supeluse neighbourhood was home to three major windmills, in addition to the Blumenfeldt Mill, the Rispel Mill on Esplanaadi Street and the Wärati Windmill on Karusselli Street. They largely disappeared from the cityscape during the First World War, when the military authorities, fearing the landing of German troops in the Gulf of Riga and the possibility of signalling the enemy from taller buildings, forced the owners to demolish the inactive windmills. However, a few mills without wings remained in Pärnu until the 1960s (such as the former Schmidt Oil Mill in Suur-Jõe and the Teinburk Mill in Loode Street in Ülejõe). 

Karl Rispel’s mill on Esplanaadi Street, similar to the Blumenfeldt Mill, was built in 1880. 

Inheritance for sons 

Over the years, Anton Blumenfeldt divided his large property into building plots. Similarly, in the 1870s, the plot under the mill was also divided, and the miller Nikolai Karlow acquired the property along Roosi Street and continued to run the mill. Anton Blumenfeldt died in 1912 as a tenant of a cattle manor in Hageri parish. According to the will made shortly before his death, he bequeathed the small house (now Supeluse 11) to his son Julius Voldemar and the larger house (later Supeluse 13) to his son Oskar Georg. 

The first qualified Estonian archaeologist 

Julius Blumenfeldt was a farmer and ran the Lehtmetsa Cattle Manor in Järva County. After his death in 1926, the manor and the house in Pärnu were inherited by his widow Aleksandrine and their stepdaughter Marta, the daughter of Julius’ sister Berta, who died in 1898. 

Marta Elisabet Schmiedehelm (1896-1981) was orphaned when she was only a couple of years old and was mainly raised by her maternal relatives. She studied Russian and Slavonic philology at the Higher Women’s Courses in St Petersburg, and then archaeology and classical philology at Petrograd University. In 1921, she moved to the Republic of Estonia, and in 1923, she graduated from the University of Tartu with a degree in archaeology. She then worked in the archaeology department of the university, and together with Harri Moora laid the foundations for scientific prehistoric archaeology in Estonia. She defended her doctoral thesis in 1944, but it was not recognised by the later Soviet authorities. During the Soviet period, she worked at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences in Tallinn. She died without descendants and was buried in Pärnu Alevi Cemetery in the gravesite of her uncle Julius Blumenfeldt. 

The future archaeologist Marta Schmiedenhelm, photographed in 1907 by Vladislav Homann in what appears to be a studio in the courtyard of the house next door. Estonian National Museum’s collection ERM Fk 3076-12 

In October 1929, Blumenfeldt’s widow and niece, Marta, resold the house to Philipp Julius Karl Lorenszonn (1864-1938) and his wife, Aurea, and the house and the plot of land were registered in the name of the latter. Aurea Margarethe Elisabeth Lorenzsonn (1875) was born in Vana-Vändra, the daughter of Gottfried Emil Bernhard Hassel (1848-1917), a local miller and later the trade representative of Tori Parish. Aurea died in Pärnu in 1938. 

The house was nationalised in 1940, the building was taken over by the housing authority and 5 apartments were built. In 1987, the building underwent a major renovation, central heating was installed and toilets and bathrooms were built in the apartments. 

Nowadays it is a house with six apartments and a well-kept front garden. 

View of the building in 1985 ERA.T-2.4-1.3373