The family moved to the nearby county town of Pärnu (Pernau) in 1850 where, in 1857, her father Johann Voldemar Jannsen started the first local Estonian language newspaper and where Lydia attended the German-language grammar school.

Any kind of expression of nationalism, including publication in indigenous languages, was a sensitive subject in the Russian Empire, however the rule of Czar Alexander II (1855–1881) was relatively liberal and Jannsen managed to persuade the imperial censorship to allow him to publish the first Estonian-language newspaper with nationwide distribution in 1864.

Koidula lived in Kronstadt for 13 years and albeit during that time she would spend the summers in Estonia, she reportedly never stopped feeling inconsolably homesick.

Nevertheless, it was also the time of the national awakening when the Estonian people, freed from serfdom in 1816, were beginning to feel a sense of pride in nationhood and to aspire to self-determination.

Like her father (and all other Estonian writers at the time) Koidula translated much sentimental German prose, poetry and drama and there is a particular influence of the Biedermeier movement.

Biedermeier, a style which dominated 'bourgeois' art in continental Europe from 1815 to 1848, developed in the wake of the suppression of revolutionary ideas following the defeat of Napoleon.

The themes of Koidula's early Vainulilled (Meadow Flowers; 1866) were certainly proto-Biedermeier, but her delicate, melodic treatment of them was in no way rustic or unsophisticated, as demonstrated in the unrestrained patriotic outpourings of Emajõe Ööbik.

By the time of the National Awakening in the 1860s, Estonia had been ruled by foreign powers – Danish, German, Swedish, Polish and Russian – for over 600 years.

It was still the subject of orthographical bickering, still used in the main for predominantly patronising educationalist or religious texts, practical advice to farmers or cheap and cheerful popular story telling.

Koidula successfully used the vernacular language to express emotions that ranged from an affectionate poem about the family cat, in Meie kass (Our Cat) and delicate love poetry, Head ööd (Good Night) to a powerful cri de coeur and rallying call to an oppressed nation, Mu isamaa nad olid matnud (My Country, They Have Buried You).

[5][6] The characterisation was rudimentary and the plot was simple but it was popular and Koidula went on to write and direct Maret ja Miina, (aka Kosjakased; The Betrothal Birches, 1870) and her own creation, the first ever completely Estonian play, Säärane mulk (What a Bumpkin!).

Koidula's attitude to the theatre was influenced by the philosopher, dramatist, and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), the author of Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (The Education of the Human Race; 1780).

It is the main task of the museum to keep alive the memory of Koidula and Jannsen and to introduce their life and work in the context of the period of national awakening in Estonia through the permanent exposition.

[8][9] There is a monument of Lydia Koidula in the citycenter of Pärnu next to the historical building of Victoria Hotel on the corner of Kuninga and Lõuna street.