Monument to the Latvian Riflemen
The Monument to the Latvian Riflemen ( Latvian Piemineklis Latviešu strēlniekiem ) is a monument to the Latvian Riflemen in the Latvian capital Riga .
location
The monument stands in front of the Latvian Occupation Museum southwest of the Town Hall Square ( Rāts laukums ) on Kalkstrasse ( Kaļķu iela ) in Riga's old town, not far from the bank of the Daugava .
Design and history
The 13 meter high monument was created in 1971 by the sculptor Valdis Albergs . Dzintars Driba was involved as an architect . The result was a group of three larger-than-life, monumental-looking figures standing on a high plinth, each standing back to back. The figures represent a commissioner , a city worker and a farm worker. The people are in uniform and wear a hat with a five-pointed star.
The monument is shown on a Soviet postage stamp from 1980 with views of Riga.
The memorial was created during the time of the Soviet occupation of Latvia and honored the so-called Red Latvian Riflemen, who emerged from the Latvian Riflemen in 1917 and fought on the side of the Soviet Bolsheviks and stood up for a Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic . During the Latvian War of Independence from 1918 to 1920, the Red Latvian Riflemen stood against the Latvian bourgeois forces striving for independence from Russia and the Soviet Union. After Latvia regained independence in 1991, the previous state-supporting statement of the monument in the sense of the Soviet Union was in question, as it was now directed against the state doctrine of the independent Latvian state.
On the initiative of Latvian historians and the architect Gunārs Lūsis-Grīnbergs , the inscription in the base was changed in 2000. The Latvian word for red and a Soviet star have been removed, so that the monument now generally commemorates the Latvian riflemen from 1915 to 1920.
A restoration took place in 2006.
On one side of the base is now written in Latvian:
LATVIESU
STRELNIEKI
1915-1920
(German: Lettische / Schützen / 1915-1920 )
Web links
Coordinates: 56 ° 56 ′ 48.5 ″ N , 24 ° 6 ′ 20.4 ″ E