Antanas Smetona

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Antanas Smetona

Antanas Smetona ( listen ? / I ) (born August 10, 1874 in Užulėnis , Ukmergė district , † January 9, 1944 in Cleveland , USA ) was the first president and later dictator of the Republic of Lithuania . Audio file / audio sample

Life

youth

Antanas Smetona attended the Academia Petrina in Jelgava (today Latvia), one of the most renowned high schools in the Baltic Sea Governments . As a high school student, he protested that the Catholic students had to take part in services of the Russian Orthodox Church . He was then referred to the Academia Petrina and had to move to a high school in Saint Petersburg . In 1897 he began studying law in Saint Petersburg. As a member of an underground student group, he distributed Lithuanian books and was therefore briefly arrested. In 1902 he graduated and worked in a bank in Vilnius .

Political activity

In pre-war Vilnius, Antanas Smetona was one of the first members of the Lithuanian Democratic Party , in whose presidium he was elected and which he then represented in the Seimas . At the same time he wrote for several Lithuanian-language newspapers and publishers, and taught Lithuanian in schools. In several publications he campaigned for an independent Lithuania. He joined the People's Progressive Party , which was newly founded in 1917, and became one of its most important representatives in Vilnius, which had been occupied by the German Reich since 1915, together with Augustinas Voldemaras .

Smetona was a co-organizer of the Lithuanian Conference and a member of its Presidium. At the same time he was a member of the Lithuanian Council (later the State Council) in Vilnius, which the German occupation authorities allowed to form. On February 16, 1918 he was one of the signatories of the Lithuanian Declaration of Independence.

President of Lithuania

On April 4, 1919, Smetona was appointed the first President of the Republic of Lithuania by the State Council. On April 19, 1920 he gave this office to Aleksandras Stulginskis , who was elected president by the Seimas. He was not re-elected to parliament, but was chairman of the National Party from 1924 to 1940, worked a.o. a. as a journalist and from 1923 as a lecturer at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas .

After the annexation of the Memelland , he became a commissioner there after the French had withdrawn, but soon resigned from this post. From 1926 he was a lecturer in art theory and history, later in philosophy.

On December 17, 1926, Smetona established a dictatorial system based on the model of Italian fascism through a military coup . He appointed Augustinas Voldemaras as prime minister. On May 15, 1928, Smetona switched off the Lithuanian parliament with the help of a new constitution . In 1929 Smetona deposed Voldemaras and took over the leadership of the country as sole dictator.

Occupation time

In the summer of 1940, under Josef Stalin , the USSR issued an ultimatum to Lithuania. Smetona failed to find a majority with his suggestion of armed resistance. He entrusted his duties to Prime Minister Antanas Merkys on June 15, 1940, and secretly fled to Germany, later to Switzerland and the USA. Two days later, under Soviet pressure, Merkys handed over his post to Justas Paleckis, who was loyal to the USSR .

In the USA

In the United States, Smetona wrote an extensive history of Lithuania, which he could not finish, however, because he died on January 9, 1944 in a fire on his son's estate in Cleveland, Ohio.

Awards

literature

  • Manfred Hellmann : Basics of the history of Lithuania and the Lithuanian people . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1986.
  • Robert Vitas: Civil-military relations in Lithuania under President Antanas Smetona, 1926–1940 . Lithuanian Research and Studies Center, Chicago, 2004. ISBN 0-929700-43-0 .
  • Klaus Richter: The cult around Antanas Smetona in Lithuania (1926–1940). Functionality and developments . In: Benno Ennker , Heidi Hein-Kircher (ed.): The leader in Europe in the 20th century . Herder Institute, Marburg, 2010. ISBN 978-3-87969-359-7 . Pp. 111-136.
  • Karl Heinz Gräfe: From the thunder cross to the swastika. The Baltic States between dictatorship and occupation . Edition Organon, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-931034-11-5 , short biography p. 440

Web links

Commons : Antanas Smetona  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Mikelis Bukšs, Leonards Latkovskis (ed.): Acta latgalica , vol. 5. Latgaļu izdevnīceiba, Munich 1974, p. 305.
  2. dhm.de
  3. ^ 'Antanas Smetona Dies in Fire: President of Lithuania Dies in Cleveland; Fled Country on Russian Occupation '; The Montreal Gazette ; January 10, 1944, p. 19
  4. Order of the White Lion ( Memento from December 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  5. AAS , Vol. 20 (1928), No. 3, p. 93.
predecessor Office successor

-
Aleksandras Stulginskis
President of Lithuania
1918–1920
1926–1940

Aleksandras Stulginskis
Antanas Merkys