Fanni Luukkonen (1882-1947)
Teacher & Leader of the Lotta Svard organization

Fanni was born in Oulu on 13 March 1882. Her father Olli - a machine operator at Oulu's first power plant and his wife Katariina Sofia had three children, of whom Fanni was the second child and only girl.

After primary school Fanni entered Oulu Girls' School, where she had the reputation of a madcap always thirsty for action. Her absolutely favorite leisure activity was sport. She already wanted to become a teacher in her childhood, and her behavior seems early on to have pointed towards the vocation which she did indeed choose that of an educator. It is said that for her the members of her large collection of dolls were not merely children as in the case of other girls but also pupils. Thus after girls' school her career took her on to the College of Further Education in Helsinki, where she finished her course in 1902. She received excellent marks for her practice teaching and for the demonstration lesson which she gave shortly afterwards.

But important events occurred during her teacher-training years, events which decisively influenced her subsequent life. When she was asked, as the leader of Lotta Svard, what spark had ignited this work, she replied by referring to events that occurred at around the turn of the century. The publication of the February Manifesto in 1899 had given her and her fellow students a jolt; the young women at the college had dressed in black for the whole spring following the publication of the Manifesto. "This first patriotic shot in the arm was intensified by the continuing events of the Frost Years [=period of oppressive russification]; these events provided a compelling impetus for people to participate in the fight for a constitution. This was followed by large-scale strikes; they were held so that people who loved their fatherland would not forget but would prepare themselves for something greater." Besides patriotism, the young Fanni Luukkonen was inspired by a deep religiousness, which went back to her childhood home and was later also reflected in her many speeches and writings. The interest in religious matters which had been awakened by her mother was undoubtedly strengthened during her time at school, and alongside Gymnastics, Religion was Fanni's strongest subject at the Girls' School. Another legacy of her home was temperance, the advocacy of which became an important aspect of Fanni's work in society. She was already giving lectures on the subject in her youth, and she viewed temperance work as a national task of far-reaching significance, never flagging in her support for it in later life.

By nature Fanni was not particularly extraverted. Although she was regarded especially in her later years - as motherly and affectionate, she was also somewhat distant. Friends considered her a reliable and loyal comrade who enjoyed meeting acquaintances and who at least wrote them letters or postcards when she could not visit them personally. She traveled a lot with friends, but she hardly talked at all about her personal affairs or feelings, giving priority to work or other topics of social interest and mainly exchanging views concerning these. Thus conversations mostly dealt with education and temperance or with religion and national issues.

In 1912, after working for several years in her home town Oulu, Fanni was invited by the schools administration to apply for a vacant position as a senior teacher at a girls' school attached to the Sortavala Teachers' College as a training school. As the only fully competent applicant, she was given the post, and for the next few years Sortavala became her new home town and that of her mother, who had moved there with her. Fanni's mother Sofia spent her whole life living with her, attending to household matters. Fanni had no great talent in cookery and was not particularly interested in it and she did not need to be: in her days, independent women like Fanni were not supposed to waste their time in the kitchen but to devote it to society, to public activities in their environment. And this is what happened in Fanni's life to an ever-increasing extent.

During this time in Sortavala, Fanni's patriotism grew stronger, since the town suffered more severely during the periods of oppression associated with the patriotic struggle than did many other communities. Despite its small size, Sortavala had already developed into the intellectual center of Ladogan Karelia in the late 19th century, and the Finnish nationalism seething there was not viewed favorably by the Russian authorities. At the Sortavala Teachers' College, Russian oppression was particularly harsh. Teachers and students had to be, as it were, constantly on the spiritual defensive. By force of circumstances, the spirit of activism became more than usually energetic there.

After the February Revolution in Russia, tyranny relaxed its grip on Finland, but conditions became unsettled. The undisciplined behavior of the Russian soldiery worsened the situation. Thus in autumn 1917 a Civil Guard unit was founded in Sortavala by decision of the town council, and in a surprise attack in January 1918 it seized weapons from the Russian troops. War began; most of the male students at the College left for the front, and the College itself was requisitioned by the military. Like other women, Fanni participated in auxiliary work for the soldiers, and for three years she lived in a college surrounded by barracks and came to know life in a military installation at close quarters. At the same time she observed what sort of work women could do under such circumstances and how such activities should be organized.

After the War of Liberation, Fanni joined the Lotta Svard, women's volunteer national defense organization. She was known as an energetic participator and a talented organizer. Aware of her capacity for hard work, the Sortavala Lotta women appointed her in 1921 to the demanding and responsible position of district secretary. For the local branch she became a sort of fountain of energy from which all initiatives sprang, as the author of her biography states. She also attracted nation-wide interest as a more than generally hard-working Lotta member who was usually present at all national Lotta conferences, boldly presenting her thoughts and ideas.

As early as 1925 Fanni was elected to Lotta Svard's national board in place of a member who had resigned. Now that she was a member of the national board, her investment of energy in the development of the organization at the national level as well grew even greater. It is thus no wonder that when the long-serving Helmi Arneberg-Pentti, announced that she would have to resign for family reasons, eyes were turned towards Fanni Luukkonen. Although there were other candidates for the post, it was unanimously decided within the organization to support Luukkonen. Thus Fanni was elected as chairwoman of Lotta Svard's national board in 1929.

During the first phase of her life's work, Fanni was a teacher; during the second, she was the leader of Lotta Svard. But the difference between these two types of work was not great: as the chairwoman of Lotta, too, Fanni regarded herself mainly as a teacher and guide. She went on teaching and lecturing trips and stressed the pedagogical responsibility of lower-level leaders. Dear to her heart was work with junior Lotta members, and education was an essential part of this.

When Fanni accepted the position of chairwoman, she knew that it involved many heavy responsibilities: Lotta Svard already had its traditions, and the organization kept on growing as the number of members increased and its work diversified into ever more fields. When Fanni became chairwoman the membership including supporting members stood at about 60,000. In 1938 it was already over 100,000, and during the war years the figure kept on increasing, so that when the organization was finally disbanded, there were over 300,000 'Lottas'. Even before the war, Lotta Svard had become the largest women's organization in Finland, and it was the largest voluntary association ever of Finnish women.

For Fanni, Lotta work meant more than just routine practical work on behalf of national defense. In her speeches and writings she tirelessly stressed the importance of the intellectual and ideological aspects. The words which she used in a speech in Viipuri (Vyborg) in 1936 typify her attitude: "What is the basis, the bedrock, on which Lotta work like Civil-Guard work seeks to found its activities? Our answer is very simple: the essential force which drives this work is love for the country that we inhabit; in other words, love for our fatherland. Emotional coldness towards the fatherland, emotional torpor and the deeds against the fatherland that result from it, have received a harsh sentence in the history of nations. A negative attitude towards the fatherland is where the road to national collapse begins."

Lotta Svard, which had for its part maintained its love of the fatherland, demonstrated the organizations necessity during the wars of 1939 - 44; one has only to observe the enormous increase in the workload from the rank and file right up to the chairwoman. A total of 90,000 Lottas assisted the armed forces during the Winter and Continuation Wars. After the Winter War, Fanni stated that although the Lottas' numbers were large, their ranks could have been thicker, and even more helping hands could have been used. The greatest shortage was that of Lotta women for air surveillance and communications. Fanni also drew attention to the fact that during the war the members had worthily adhered to their Lotta oath and had fulfilled their duties even when their own lives were at risk. In all, some 300 Lottas died in the course of duty during the two wars.

In the year of the Interim Peace that followed the Winter War, training was improved, as the war had revealed how much more training was needed by the Lottas as well as others. The most important courses were supervised by Fanni at Tuusula, where a Lotta college had been founded before the war near the Civil Guard officers' school located there. The course held there in June 1940 after the Winter War turned into a special celebration and a tribute not only to the organization as a whole but especially to its leader Fanni Luukkonen: Marshal Mannerheim appeared at the end-of-course celebration to award the chairwoman the Order of the Cross of Liberty, First Class with Swords. Fanni was the first woman to be accorded this honour. After the Continuation War she also received the Grand Star of the order the highest decoration ever granted to a woman in Finland.

During both of these wars Fannis life was filled with work. Like other members of the national board, she went on inspection tours around the country from Lapland to the Karelian Isthmus and also to the Dvina and Onega regions beyond the old border. She occasionally took along foreign visitors interested Lotta Svard's activities to see the womens practical work especially under front-line conditions. She also gave lectures and talks, both at home and abroad, on the history and activities of the Lottas. Especially warm were her personal relations with Sweden and the leader of the Swedish Lotta organization Maja Schmidt, a general's wife, who stated that the work of the Finnish Lottas was a worthy example not only for the Swedish Lottas but also for those of all other (Scandinavian and Baltic) countries. In Germany, too, the Finnish Lottas were held in high esteem; one indication of this was that Adolf Hitler awarded Luukkonen a very high German honour the Adlerkreuz with Grand Star - at the headquarters of the Third Reich in 1943. Fanni was the only non-German woman granted this distinction.

After the war Lotta Svard was disbanded under the terms of the provisional peace treaty. Fanni was then 62 years old. The dissolution of the organization was perhaps more painful to her than to any other person. After the disbandment she lived in Helsinki on a small Lotta pension, doing occasional translation and other literary work. Among the depressing experiences of this phase of her life was the anonymous hate mail that she received in the years after the war.

But despite everything, she tried to preserve her optimism. In the post-war years patriotic work had to retreat into the home, just as in the years of Tsarist oppression. "A people will endure if its homes endure", she stated after the war. But the psychological pressure of the period weakened Fanni's health, which had already been poor beforehand. "I am no longer capable of great exertions", she stated in 1945. Some three years after the disbandment of the Lotta Svard organization, she died of a heart attack in October 1947. She was buried in the family grave at Kruununsaari in Ii. On the gravestone was carved a representation of the Lotta badge and beneath it the sentence: "The Fatherland is God's Idea".

Source: The National Biography of Finland