the Baltic Germans, the Estophile educated class admired the ancient culture of the Estonians and their era of freedom before the conquests by Danes and Germans in the 13th century. The Estophile Enlightenment Period formed the transition from religious Estonian literature to newspapers written in Estonian for the mass public. The ideas of Johann Gottfried Herder greatly influenced the Baltic German intelligentsia to see the value in the indigenous culture. Inspired by Herder's collection of European and Estonian folk songs, they came to view native folklore as natural expressions of truth and spontaneity. As a result, they founded several scientific societies, published textbooks for schools, newspapers and literary works of considerable merit, such as the construction of the epic Kalevipoeg from folk sources. Otto Wilhelm Masing and Garlieb Merkel were prominent Estophiles. Masing was one of the main advocates of peasant education and published a weekly newspaper in the Estonian language called "Maa rahva Näddali Leht" (Peasants' Weekly) from 1821. The Litterarum Societatis Esthonicae (Estonian: Õpetatud Eesti Selts) (English: Learned Estonian Society) was established in Tartu in 1838, which counted as its members Friedrich Robert Faehlmann and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, author of the Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg which was inspired by the Finnish epic Kalevala. Folklore recording Folklore being a relatively easily identifiable collectible, a number of Estophiles have undertaken recording various folktales and folk songs. On one hand, this led to development of Estonian literary tradition; on another, growing amounts of written Estonian language texts necessitated development of (relatively) unified rules of orthography, and thus, led to analysis of Estonian grammar and phonetics. Linguistic analyses An Estonian grammar was printed in German in 1637. Johann Heinrich Rosenplänter published the first academic journal in 1813 on an Estonian topic called Beiträge zur genauern Kenntniß der ehstnischen Sprache (Towards a more precise Knowledge of the Estonian Language), aimed at developing written Estonian. In 1843, a grammar of the Estonian language was compiled by pastor Eduard Ahrens using the Finnish and popular orthography rather than the German-Latin models used previously. Modern Estophiles While the significance of Estophiles has waned over the centuries, a number of people (Astrīde Ivask, Seppo Kuusisto, Kazuto Matsumura and others) are still widely regarded as such. Since World War II, many of the Estophiles around the world have been in close connection with various Estonian exile communities. One of the most active Estophile organizations is the Tuglas Society