Voldemar Lender

Voldemar Lender ( in Tallinn, Estonia – 30 September 1939 in Tallinn) was an Estonian engineer who was the mayor of Tallinn (or Reval at that time) from 1906 to 1913, notably being the first ethnic Estonian to become the mayor of Tallinn.

Biography Lender was born to a family who owned a construction company. He first studied at Tallinn's Alexander Gymnasium, later attending the Saint Petersburg State University's Department of Physics and Mathematics from 1896 to 1897, then later attending the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology from 1897 to 1902. After graduating from the latter, he worked as an engineer at the Dvigatel wagon factory in Tallinn until 1906, a lucrative position for the time.

In 1904, Lender was elected as a city councilor in Tallinn. From 1906 to 1913, he was the mayor of Tallinn while also working at the city's construction department. He primarily tackled issues concerning the economic and communal affairs of the increasingly urbanized population of the city. He was the first ethnic Estonian mayor of Tallinn, the result of a coalition between Estonian and Russian politicians attempting to break the power that Baltic Germans had on politics in the Baltic states, and in Tallinn in particular, for centuries. This wave of Estonian and Russian politicians also included future president Konstantin Päts, Jaan Teemant, the first mayor of Tallinn of Russian descent Erast Hiatsintov, and future prime minister Otto Strandman.

From 1903 to 1914, he had a building and engineering office where Anton Uesson (who worked at Lender's office from 1909 to 1912, constructing Jugendstil buildings in Tallinn), began his career as a civil engineer.

Lender's work primarily consisted of one-and two-story wooden tenement houses with symmetrical facades, called Lender Houses. Despite not being the first designer or the most productive manufacturer of the design that bears his name, he formalised and carried out the supervision of their construction.

Lender's wife, Elfriede Lender (née Meikov), was a teacher who founded the first Estonian-speaking girls' school in Estonia. They had four children: daughters Ilka and Juta, teachers, Uno Lender (:et) (1906–1942), a diplomat, and Henno Lender (:et) (1905–1991), a doctor and military captain.

Lender received the second class order of the Order of the Cross of the Eagle on 14 January 1935.

Ending in August 2017, a competition to design a monument memorialising Voldemar and Elfriede Lender was held. The monument was built near the Elfriede Lenderi Eragümnaasium, which Elfriede founded, in the Torupilli district of Tallinn to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Estonia in 2018.