>The Estonian Age of Awakening (Estonian: Ärkamisaeg) is a period in history where Estonians came to acknowledge themselves as a nation deserving the right to govern themselves. This period is considered to begin in the 1850s with greater rights being granted to commoners and to end with the declaration of the Republic of Estonia in 1918.
>Estonians, including Friedrich Robert Faehlmann (German), Kristjan Jaak Peterson (Swedish) and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (German), came to prominence in the 1820s. The ruling elite had remained predominantly German in language and culture since the conquest of the early 13th century. Garlieb Merkel (1769-1850), a Baltic German Estophile, was the first author to treat the Estonians as a nationality equal to others; he became a source of inspiration for the Estonian national movement, modelled on Baltic German cultural world before the middle of the 19th century. However, in the middle of the century the Estonians, with such leaders as Carl Robert Jakobson (Estonian), Jakob Hurt (Estonian) and Johann Voldemar Jannsen (Estonian), became more ambitious in their political demands and started leaning towards the Finns as a successful model of national movement.