It was among Baltic-German literati, e.g. the pastor and linguist August Wilhelm Hupel (1737–1819) and the teacher Johann Christoph Brotze (1742–1823), that interest in the region’s history first took hold, involving the natural landscape and its antiquities as well as folk customs. In the course of the 19th century this fed into a concerted quest for a specific Baltic-German identity; this was centred around medieval art and architecture, and the Germans’ arrival in their Baltic “homeland” (in Estonia the beginning of the Middle Ages is dated from the early-13th-century “Baltic Crusade”). The hierarchies of style within the emerging discipline of art history supported this view: nearly all monuments of art-historical value in the area were the heritage of the Baltic Germans, or in fewer cases the Swedes. Although the Tartu Cathedral ruins had gone through a major reconstruction as early as 1804-07 (led by the architect Johann Wilhelm von Krause, 1757–1828), the renovation of Tallinn’s St Olaf’s Church in 1828-40 was the first conscious attempt to restore the authentic style of a structure. Several others followed: in the 1840s-50s St Nicholas’s Church, the cathedral, and the former Dominican convent in Tallinn, Narva Castle, Haapsalu Cathedral; in the 1870s the Tallinn town wall; at the turn of the century Pirita Convent, Rakvere and Kuressaare castles.

Concerns and developments in art history and heritage preservation (e.g. with Tallinn-born Georg Dehio, 1850–1932) were reflected in the activity of local cultural and historical associations, which maintained close contacts with similar societies throughout the German-speaking areas in both Russia and Central Europe. Following the oldest and most prominent among these – Tartu’s Gelehrte Estnische Gesellschaft (1838-1950) – similar societies for antiquities were founded in other towns (Pärnu, Paide, Kuressaare, Viljandi). Many had publication series and small museums, sometimes intermingling Baltic-German and indigenous heritage. In the wider Baltic context, most influential was the Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Altertumskunde der Ostseeprovinzen Russlands (1834-1939) in Riga. Active contributors included architects and (amateur) historians. Gotthard von Hansen’s (1821–1900) Über die kirchlichen Bauwerke Revals und deren Alterthümer (1858) and Friedrich Amelung’s (1842–1909) Revaler Alterthümer (1884) paved the way for scholarly research. The most thorough and scholarly were Wilhelm Neumann’s (1849–1919) Grundriss einer Geschichte der bildenden Künste und des Kunstgewerbes in Liv-, Est- und Kurland vom Ende des 12. bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts (1887), as well as his and Eugen von Nottbeck’s (1842–1900) Geschichte und Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Reval (1896-1904).

Having no art-historical heritage of their own, the Estonians remained passive towards this “alien” heritage until the achievement of independent statehood; inimical feelings came to the surface when rebellious peasants arsoned and plundered c.100 manors during the 1905 revolution. During the late 19th century, however, Estonians developed an interest in their own “national” archeological and ethnographic heritage, bolstered also by a flourishing of historical tales published in the 1880s and set in ancient times. The Russification of the eastern provinces of the empire in the 1880s-90s further intensified identity-seeking processes (both among Baltic Germans and Estonians). In the 1880s Jakob Hurt, Oskar Kallas (1868–1946), and Jaan Jung (1835–1900) initiated campaigns to collect folklore and data about pre-historic heritage. Since the 1890s the tangible ethnographic heritage started attracting artists, led by the well-known painters and activists Raud and Ants Laikmaa (1866–1942) with numerous speeches and newspaper articles, as well as the theatre innovator Karl Menning (1874–1941) and the first professional ethnographer, Helmi Neggo (1892–1920). Later they cooperated with the Estonian Farmers’ Society of Tartu (Tartu Eesti Põllumeeste Selts, 1870-1940) and the Estonian National Museum (Eesti Rahva Muuseum, established 1909).

The need for legislation on heritage protection became an issue in the early 20th century, but preparations were interrupted by the war, after which the Baltic Germans lost their social position. The Heritage Conservation Act was finally adopted only in 1925, dividing the tangible heritage into four fields: history, art history, archeology, and ethnography.

The activities outlined here, both by Baltic Germans and by Estonians, took place outside the university. Estonian art history, as well as ethnology, archeology, or history entered the University of Tartu curriculum as main subjects only in 1919 (even classical art history had been taught as a subsidiary part of other curricula). Researchers of Estonian origin started to deal with (and drastically reinterpret) the art-historical heritage only thereafter, opposing the image of Estonia as a mere German province (with arguments such as construction materials from the Estonian soil, the natives’ labour). Although the German language continued to dominate in academic papers up to 1930s, the year 1918 had also caused an ethnic shift. The first wave of professors in the “national disciplines” had to be invited from abroad and were (not coincidentally) mostly Swedish or Finnish. For similar reasons the concept of a Baltic-Nordic artistic region (put forward by the Swedish art historian Johnny Roosval) was eagerly adopted in the 1920s by the country’s first professor in art history, Helge Kjellin (1885–1984), himself a Swede. Russian architecture was cold-shouldered both by Baltic Germans and by Estonians.