ABSTRACT
Baron von Stackelberg’s distaste at having to follow what he termed the ‘sterile democratic mechanistic’ route to corporate organization under Estonia’s 1925 autonomy law tacitly recognized the divisions that existed within his own small and formerly exclusive Baltic German community. Even those Germans in favour of cultural autonomy can have had no illusions about the scale of the task involved in setting up a cultural self-government. Whatever reservations there were did not prevent the leaders of the Estonian Germans from moving promptly to implement the provisions of the law following its final ratification by parliament on 12 February 1925. Just three days later, a delegate meeting of the Deutsch-Baltische Partei (DBP) resolved to seek official approval for the establishment of German cultural self-government. To this end, various party members, including August Spindler, Heinrich Pantenius and Harry Koch, formed a preparatory commission to consider the many practical issues that were bound to arise. 1 Realizing that many if not most Estonian Germans were unclear about the process, commission members offered to make themselves available to give talks and lectures to the wider public. 2
