“The Baltic Tragedy”, magnum opus of Siegfried von Vegesack, one of the most well-known Baltic German writers, tells a story of a noble family who lives in Latvian and Estonian territories at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Kertu Moppel and Karl Laumets have distilled their own stage version from Vegesack’s expansive trilogy, which views this complicated time period through a gallery of colourful characters.

The novel’s lead character Aurel starts sensing the imaginary glass wall that separates him, the landlord’s son, from the local Latvians with whom they live side-by-side. When going to school in Riga, he is demanded to call himself a Russian, despite his father telling him that he is in fact, German. The conflicts deepen as years go by and the lives of the Baltic German families take an irreversible turn after the 1905 revolution, First World War, the red and white terror, and the Landeswehr war.