Poll (2010)

After her mother’s death, fourteen-year-old Oda comes from Berlin to her father Ebbo’s estate on Estonia’s Baltic coast. It is the eve of the First World War. Estonia is a province of the Russian Empire, and Russian soldiers are billeted on the estate as they hunt Estonian anarchists. Oda’s father is a professor of medicine who buys corpses from the Russians and dissects them. In a former sawmill he calls his laboratory, he has assembled an impressive collection of specimens preserved in jars. After divorcing Oda’s mother, he married Milla, whose son he raises with brutal strictness. Oda feels uncomfortable in the family and prefers to keep to herself, reading, writing, and exploring the area. While doing so, she discovers a badly wounded Estonian anarchist in a small, dilapidated church. He does not want to reveal his name, but suggests that she call him Schnaps. She helps him and secretly nurses him on the plank floor above her father’s laboratory. The Estonian recovers there, and Oda spends a lot of time with him; the two young people are drawn to each other. Once he has recovered, Schnaps wants to return to his comrades, and Oda wants to go with him, though he tries in vain to dissuade her. On the day they plan to leave, most of the estate’s residents are on an outing. Oda and Schnaps pack their things in the laboratory, but Schnaps chloroforms the girl. At that moment, the steward, Mechmershausen, enters the building, destroys most of the specimens, and starts a fire—out of hatred for Oda’s father, who has abused Milla, with whom Mechmershausen is having an affair. Schnaps manages to escape the building and knock the steward down. He looks at the waiting horse, then at the burning house, and decides to rescue Oda, who is lying unconscious in the attic. Half suffocated, he escapes the inferno with Oda in his arms, but the steward captures him and locks him up in an outbuilding. When the estate’s residents and the Russians return, the steward also hides in this building with Oda, and after several dramatic complications, Schnaps shoots himself in order to save her.