[Eric]

Good, Mirabell, that it is translated directly from the Estonian. Thanks for checking that out.

I finally found an entry for Adolf-Eduard Graf (1881-1962) in the Eesti kirjanike leksikon i.e. the Lexicon of Estonian Writers (2000), and a few details are:

Baltic German. Born in Tallinn. School in Tallinn and Saint Petersburg. Studied Germanic philology at Tartu University. Wrote his PhD thesis on "Die Grundlagen des Reinecke Fuchs". Worked in Novgorod, Berlin, Heidelberg, then as a German teacher on the island of Saaremaa (Ösel) from 1924-39. Moved to Germany in 1939, worked as an interpreter. Died in Potsdam in the GDR.

Wrote several linguistic books and his translations into German are:

* Eduard Vilde: Mahtra sõda (The Mahtra War) 1952, reprint 1984

* Anton Hansen Tammsaare: Kõrboja peremees (The Master of Kõrboja) 1958

* Anton Hansen Tammsaare: Tõde ja õigus I (first volume of Truth and Justice = Wargamäe) 1970, reprint 1978

plus unnamed Estionian short-stories.

You can see why he called himself A. Graf after WWII and when living in the GDR, as the name "Adolf" was by then not very popular...