16 November 1900
Nikolai Erdman was born
The future playwright was born in Moscow. His father, Russified Baltic German and Lutheran by religion, Robert Erdman worked as an accountant of the factory “Association of silk manufactory”. Nicolai started writing poetry at nine. He graduated from the Petropavlovsk Real Commercial School and very early joined a group of imaginists due to his brother, a painter Boris Erdman who was friend of Sergey Esenin and Anatoly Marienhof. At the age of 24 Nikolai Erdman wrote his first play “Mandate” which brought him recognition.