Jungletten

Jungletten ( Lat .: Jaunlatvieši ) is the most common name for the intellectuals of the first "national awakening" of the Latvians between 1850 and 1890.

term

Jaunlatvieši is sometimes translated as New Latvians ; Jungletten or Junge Letten is more accurate because it is modeled on the literary movement Junge Deutschland . Originally it was a derogatory term used by their mostly German-Baltic opponents for the nationalist intellectuals, which was then adopted by them as a self-term in the sense of a Geusen word . The term “a young Latvia” was first used in 1856 by Gustav Wilhelm Sigmund Brasche, the pastor of Nīca , in a review by Juris Alunāns ' Dziesmiņas latviešu valodai pārtulkotas (German: Little songs, translated into Latvian ) in the newspaper Das Inland . Reflecting on those who might appreciate such literature in Latvia (Alunāns' book was the first major translation of classical foreign poetry into the Latvian language), Brasche warned that those who dreamed of the dream of “a young Latvia” embraced the tragic fate of the ferryman Heinrich Heine's poem about the Loreley would suffer; the translation was part of Alunāns' collection of poems.

The young Latvians were sometimes referred to as "tautībnieki" ( folklorists ) or, based on the Slavophiles, as "Lettophiles".

Beginnings

Although the young Latvians can be seen as part of a mainly cultural and literary movement, their appearance had significant political implications because of the social and economic conditions prevailing in Latvia at the time. Although the Baltic Governments of Livonia and Courland as well as Latgale belonged to the Russian Empire , Latvia was dominated by German-Baltic nobles.

The year 1856 is generally regarded as the beginning of the movement: Alunāns' book appeared and the largest Latvian-language newspaper Mājas Viesis ( The Houseguest ), which was a counterpoint to the German-friendly newspaper Latweeschu Awises , was founded. Another contemporary and offensive event was the public declaration of nationality by a later leader of the movement, Krišjānis Valdemārs , who was a student at Dorpat University from 1854 to 1858 . Valdemārs put a business card on his door as a name tag, naming him “C. Woldemar stud. cam. Latweetis ”. At that time it was almost unheard of for an educated person to call themselves “Lette”, education meant Germanization and Valdemārs' deed was compared to what Luther did when he posted his 95 theses on the portal of the Wittenberg Castle Church . Some scholars consider this incident (Valdemārs' door plate) to be irrelevant. The historian Arveds Švābe recalled that Valdemārs, in his own writings, refused to be called a radical.

Until the 1860s, the young Latvians had no political program to challenge the Baltic Germans, after Švābe their political resistance to the ruling order only crystallized under the influence of the Slavophiles and the reforms of Tsar Alexander II . One of the main concerns of the young Latvians was that the Latvian farmers, who were mostly tenants and farm laborers on the estates of the nobility, could become owners of the land they worked.

Exponents

Krišjānis Valdemārs is considered the spiritual father of the "national awakening". Together with Alunāns he led student assemblies in Dorpat and advocated folklore studies and the establishment of naval academies to make the Latvians and Estonians seafaring peoples.

Krišjānis Barons , under the influence of Valdemārs, began collecting dainas , folk songs and poems. Barons later made collecting the Dainas his life's work and completed the work they had started together. In 1862 Valdemārs, Alunāns and Barons in Saint Petersburg jointly published the most radical Latvian-language newspaper to date, the Pēterburgas Avīzes . In 1865 this was banned by the authorities.

Atis Kronvalds (also known as Kronvaldu Atis) renewed the "Latvian Evenings" that Valdemārs had started in Dorpat from 1867 to 1873. His book National Ambitions , published in 1872 under the name Otto Kronwald , in which Kronvalds deals with the opponents of the young Latvians, can be regarded as the manifesto of the young Latvians.

Her older colleagues included Kaspars Biezbārdis , the first Latvian philologist who helped draft petitions to the tsar attacking the harsh conditions for the Latvian farm workers, who was exiled to Kaluga in 1863 , and Andrejs Spāģis , who was the first writer to draw European attention to the Baltic problem.

Fricis Brīvzemnieks is considered the father of Latvian folklore.

The poet Auseklis (pseudonym for Krogzemju Mikus ) stood - according to the diplomat and scholar Arnold Spekke - for the “romantic and mystical search for the soul of the nation”.

The Junglette Andrejs Pumpurs wrote the national epic Lāčplēsis (The Bear Killer) in 1888 .

Developments and divisions

Pumpurs retrospectively described the movement as follows: “Those in this group who fought for freedom for twenty-five years were called Jungletten. They almost all had the same fate. Without a homeland, their people without rights, without goods and subsistence, often even without shelter and bread, they were doomed to wander. All doors were closed to them, they were denied a place to live or work. With a heavy heart they left their beloved homeland and went abroad, into the Russian heartland in search of livelihood and knowledge. "

In fact, half of Latvians who were getting higher education at that time were forced to look for work in Russia. Švābe wrote: “With their selfish and short-sighted politics, the German-Baltic nobility pushed the young Latvians into friendship with Russia.” Even German-Baltic intellectuals who devoted themselves to the study of Latvian culture and language, such as August Johann Gottfried Bielenstein , the editor the Latviešu Avīzes , attacked the young Latvians. Robert Gustav Keuchel (1832–1910), the editor of the newspaper for Stadt und Land , stated that it was impossible to be educated and Latvian, an educated Latvian was "absurd". Pastor Brasche wrote that there was no Latvian nation, nor did the Latvian people have a past, and suggested replacing the term “young Latvians” with “young farmers”. The most popular Protestant magazine stated that the Latvians were a nation in the 13th century, but have since degenerated into a peasant class: “Does each class need its own language? Latvian must die out. "

The ethnic Latvian supporters of the Baltic Germans became known as "Altletten". Because many opponents of the Jungletten were associated with the Protestant Church, the Jungletten movement also had a decidedly anti-clerical character.

Although a branch of the "national awakening" was based in Dorpat and later moved to Saint Petersburg and Moscow , the Latophiles managed to establish themselves in Latvia in the late 1860s. In 1867 they set up an aid fund for the victims of famine in Estonia and Finland, and a year later they were allowed to found the Riga Latvian Society. Similar societies followed in other cities, the Rigaer received the nickname "Mütterchen" (māmuļa). The Riga Latvian Society (Rīgas Latviešu biedrība) staged the first Latvian play, held the first conference of Latvian teachers and in 1873 organized the first Latvian song festival .

As a pragmatist and materialist , Valdemārs came in exile and under police surveillance in Moscow under the influence of Slavophiles when he worked for the publisher Mikhail Nikiforowitsch Katkow . For Vāldemārs “the kulake could never be as dangerous as the German with his iron claws”. In reality, the freedom the young Latvians were looking for in the east was under Tsar Alexander III. soon completely in retreat and the Latvian language more endangered by Russification than by Germanization.

literature

in order of appearance

Arveds Švābe: Latvijas vēsture 1800-1914 . Daugava, Uppsala 1958.
Ernests Blanks: Latvju tautas ceļš uz neatkarīgu valsti . Ziemeļbāzma, Västerås 1970.
Uldis Ģērmanis: Latviešu tautas piedzīvojumi . Ceļinieks, Ann Arbor 1974.
Agnis Balodis: Latvijas un latviešu tautas vēsture . Kabata, Riga 1991.
Arturs Priedītis: Latvijas kultūras vēsture. No vissenākajiem laikiem līdz mūsdienām . AKA, Daugavpils 2000, ISBN 9984-582-11-6 (with summaries in Russian and English).
Maksim Valeryevich Kirtschanow: Zemnieki, latvieši, pilsoņi. идентичность, национализм и модернизация в Латвии . Научная книга, Voronezh 2009, ISBN 978-5-98222-461-3 (Russian, with Latvian sources).
Kristine Wohlfart: National Movement and State Foundation . In: Ivars Ījabs, Jan Kusber , Ilgvars Misāns, Erwin Oberländer (eds.): Lettland 1918–2018. A century of statehood . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2018, ISBN 978-3-506-78905-1 , pp. 13-26.

Footnotes

↑ Kristine Wohlfart: National Movement and State Foundation . In: Ivars Ījabs, Jan Kusber, Ilgvars Misāns, Erwin Oberländer (eds.): Lettland 1918–2018. A century of statehood . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2018, pp. 13–26, here p. 15.
↑ Kristine Wohlfart: National Movement and State Foundation . In: Ivars Ījabs, Jan Kusber, Ilgvars Misāns, Erwin Oberländer (eds.): Lettland 1918–2018. A century of statehood . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2018, pp. 13–26, here p. 16.

[1] Kristine Wohlfart: National Movement and State Foundation . In: Ivars Ījabs, Jan Kusber, Ilgvars Misāns, Erwin Oberländer (eds.): Lettland 1918–2018. A century of statehood . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2018, pp. 13–26, here p. 15.

[2] Kristine Wohlfart: National Movement and State Foundation . In: Ivars Ījabs, Jan Kusber, Ilgvars Misāns, Erwin Oberländer (eds.): Lettland 1918–2018. A century of statehood . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2018, pp. 13–26, here p. 16.