in 1897 Early in his career Eino Leino was much loved and praised by the critics. He joined literary and newspaper circles and became a member of the Young Finnish circle. Among Leino's friends were the artist
Pekka Halonen and
Otto Manninen, who gained fame as a poet and translator. As early as November 1917, Eino Leino had annoyedly warned in the
Sunnuntai magazine that the country was "on the brink of
civil war," and fiercely criticized the
Socialists as they set out to "pursue their cause with civil blood and the stings of a foreign conqueror" (No. 40-41 / 1917). The political situation, which escalated into the
Finnish Civil War, was a bitter experience for Leino, who had always written for tolerance and also appreciated the
labor movement from which he had good friends. Leino experienced the events of the spring of 1918 in the
Red-conquered
Helsinki, and he described his experiences in the report novel
The Conquest of Helsinki (1918). He greeted the German
Baltic Sea Division, which had invaded southern Finland and conquered Helsinki, as a liberator. But on the other hand, Leino later drove a general amnesty for Red Side line men and women in prisons and demanded the abolition of the
death penalty. In April 1918, Leino's six-part series of articles called "For the Finnish Workers" was published in the
Social Democratic magazine
Työn valta ("Power of Labor"), in which he, as an impartial writer belonging to the "civilized
poverty", strongly appealed for peace and mutual understanding. “Social democracy would no longer have a future in Finland unless it was able to internalize the "eternal ideals" of
legitimacy,
democracy and
civil liberty,” he wrote. After the Finnish Civil War, Leino's idealistic faith for national unity collapsed, and his influence as a journalist and polemicist weakened. He was granted a State writer's pension in 1918 at the age of forty. Although publishing prolifically, he had financial problems and his health deteriorated. "Life is always a struggle with eternal forces," Leino said in a letter in 1925 to his friend
Bertel Gripenberg. After his trip to Estonia, he signed his third marriage to bank clerk Hanna Laitinen. The desperate attempt to gain support and security ended almost immediately in the separation of the spouses. In 1921, Leino applied for exemption from
Finnish citizenship. He wrote letters to President
K. J. Ståhlberg and Estonian Head of State
Konstantin Päts asking to become an Estonian citizen. Leino was tired of the lack of
scholarships and the criticism he received. Leino was married three times and had one daughter, Helka. He died in 1926 at the age of 47 and later he was buried at the
Hietaniemi Cemetery in Helsinki. Already at that time as a famous man, he was buried at the expense of the state, and the funeral was attended by President
L. K. Relander and other statesmen of the country. The most detailed biography of Leino was written in 1930s by his lover and colleague
L. Onerva. In the dramatic story Onerva is also writing about her own life. On the other hand, the cause of Leino's death has also been suggested to be
syphilis by Leino's personal doctor Väinö Lindén on the basis of L. Onerva's biographical margin. == Literary style and importance ==