The sect leader’s grandchild tells a strange memory: Admired Mamma kouri from the lower end – 2024-02-18 16:23:57

When the powerful of the locality, known as Mamma and mother Deebe Tekla Holopainen was carried to rest in the grave in the summer of 1994, one of the coffin bearers was Allu “Rölli troll” Tuppurainen.

Known as a prophet, the cheerful and contradictory Mamma, who plays the harmonica, remained quite distant from her granddaughter Allu.

Author Arto Julkunen talked about Tuppurai in his work Pious and fragile – the story of an unknown faith community (Aviator). The book tells the story of Tekla Holopainen’s sister community founded in Tetrimäki in Vehmersalmi.

The community made national news in the 1950s when its members were suspected of “practicing fornication”, i.e. homosexuality.

Julkunen decided to write a book about Tekla Holopainen’s life, because the character who rose from poor circumstances to become powerful had plenty of ingredients.

– There was some special charisma and strength in her that she was able to rise from among many academic sisters to become a leader. Apparently, apparitions and messages put him on a pedestal, Julkunen speculates to Iltalehte.

Tekla Holopainen went on preaching tours in Germany, from where she brought numerous harmonicas for her own use. PICTURE FROM THE BOOK HURSKAAT JA HAURAAT, RAUNO KORHONEN’S ALBUM

Examination of the hymen

In the book, Tuppurainen reveals an incident that he has never told before, not even to his loved ones.

Tuppurainen’s mother said that one night Mamma crept up to her sleeping daughter and grabbed her from the bottom. Mamma tried by all means to keep her daughter clean, so to speak. He must have wanted to examine his daughter’s amniotic membrane himself.

Mamma probably wanted to prevent the same thing from happening to her daughter. Mamma had had her own daughter very young, alone, and had to give her away.

Mamma-Holopainen was born in the poorest of the poor. The girl started begging at the age of five and became a beggar’s child, i.e. she was auctioned off to a family that demanded the lowest price for her care.

Holopaise grew into an exceptionally energetic woman who wanted to dance and have fun. It was said in the villages that he was “happy to be downstairs”.

After receiving a spiritual awakening, he founded a sisterhood with his religious sisters, the faith community Myrttilaakso.

Attractive dentist

When Holopainen got ownership of land and forest in 1945, according to Julkunen’s book, the construction of a new Christian sect began on Tetrimäki near Kuopio. Cooperation was made with the sisters of the nearby Lintula monastery.

Identity as a religious community was created by self-composed songs, of which there were even hundreds.

Whatever Holopainen did, according to his contemporaries, he did it big and showy. He was described as cheerful and nice.

Big parties were often organized on Tetrimäki, where people danced, sang, ate well and dressed festively.

The neighborhood mostly reacted favorably to the activities of the sisterhood. One of the reasons for that was the Tetrimäki dentist’s services.

After the Second World War, Finns’ teeth were in terrible condition. Full-mouth prostheses were not uncommon already at boarding school age.

A dentist who joined the sisterhood Hertta Timonella enough work. Local residents’ teeth were patched without local anesthesia with a belt-driven drill.

Crystal Crowns of the Prophet

Mother Deebe, or Holopai, was considered a prophetess. He saw visions and had revelations. He said that he himself was not on earth for the first time.

At times, even more than a hundred people lived in the sisterhood’s own small village. There was no exact information about the financing of the place, but it is said that Tekla’s money bag has always been full.

Tekla also went on preaching trips abroad. The trips brought money through the magazines. Many who supported or joined the sister community from abroad were quite wealthy.

The sister home of Tetrimäki also had an office in Israel, where Mamma visited many times.

The matron of Tetrimäki was pompous and magnificent. He said goodbye to the miserable and poor conditions of his childhood. According to the story, there were seven chandeliers in Tekla’s sauna building.

You will have already laughed

Children who had come there with their mothers also lived in the sister home in Tetrimäki. Sisarkot was suggestively named “village of fatherless children”.

In 1951, the nursing home made national headlines. Was fornication practiced in the sisterhood?

The police went around the neighborhood asking questions about the sisterhood’s love life. According to Julkunen’s book, some locals suspected from the beginning that Myrttilaakso was a lesbian community.

According to the law, homosexual acts were crimes in Finland until 1971.

In the sister home of Tetrimäki, or Myrttilaakso, suspicions were especially raised by the so-called lubrication with oil.

In the sisterhood, the genitals of those who refused marriage because of their faith were anointed. The purpose was declared to be the final extinguishing of carnal lust.

According to the prosecutor, it was debauchery.

“They made fun of each other”

After seven days of questioning, nine of the eleven accused women confessed to their crimes. It later turned out that the women who were frightened by the interrogations might not even know the words they were being interrogated with.

In the book, it is said that a male interviewee said: “They were la(a)ttapills who made fun of each other.”

However, the truth was that in addition to sisters, there were also brothers, workers, widows and two-parent families living in the home.

Tekla Holopainen and another woman who was part of the leadership of the sisterhood pleaded not guilty. They said the spending was part of a religious ritual.

Eight religious sisters were convicted of continued fornication with another person of the same sex.

When the verdicts were announced, one of the sisters got so upset that she jumped on the table to shout her protest about the verdict.

The medium of the end times

Tekla Holopainen’s sentence was finally one year and six months long.

The trial and the verdicts made big stains on the sisterhood’s reputation. After the court proceedings, the sisterhood’s children’s home operations were stopped. Residents moved out.

The basic ideas of the sister community from the beginning had been that the end times are at hand.

Life in the nursing home was not just waiting for the end times, but parties were still organized. The end of the world was expected to happen in 1978.

Adult baptisms were given in the nursing home. Mamma herself gave the baptism on the waves of Kallavesi.

Tekla Holopainen’s declaration changed over time. According to Julkunen’s book, along with the peculiarly interpreted doctrine of Christianity, he also took on the role of fortune teller and medium. Mamma lit up with a new spirit.

The treasures of the concrete bunker

In 1978, Mamma Holopainen first built a good-sized beach sauna made of logs and then also a house on the birch plot on the shore of the lake.

The complex also included a garage, under which a concrete bunker was built. Holopainen stores canned goods, jewelry and precious metals there. According to the book, Mamma had a lot of valuables.

According to Julkunen’s book, it is likely that this new Tetrimäki was built with the money of the sisterhood’s German followers.

In the 1980s, a handicraft workshop, an art weaving workshop and a furniture workshop were established in Tetrimäki.

In the 1990s, an organization helping those affected by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident brought children from contaminated areas to Tetrimäki for a few summers. The children could play, go on excursions, and what was most wonderful: swim in the clean lake water.

What now, Tetrimäki?

In the 1990s, Mamma began to passionately play the lottery with large sums. Even his club did not approve of this kind of waste of money.

It was arranged so that 13 people living in the community would get control of the property together.

Tekla Holopainen died at home on May 31, 1994.

After that, the sisterhood faded away.

The Tetrimäki Foundation continues to run the operations of the Tetrimäki farm.

In this millennium Tetrimäki has organized, among other things, musical instrument building courses, concerts, meetings and recreation days and also the 2003 bishops’ meeting.

Correction at 12:57. Clarified that it was society, not their families, that actually paid for the crybaby children.