Jurgis Savickis

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Jurgis Savickis, around 1929

Jurgis Savickis (born May 4, 1890 in Pagausantys near Ariogala , Lithuania , † December 22, 1952 ) was a Lithuanian diplomat, theater director and author. As an ambassador for his country, he was mainly used in Scandinavian countries, but also in Switzerland with the League of Nations . As a writer, he was influenced by modernism and expressionism.

Family and education

As the son of a family of wealthy Lithuanian farmers, after attending local schools in Ariogala and Kaunas, his father financed grammar school No. 6 in Moscow from 1902 . From autumn 1911 he studied agriculture in Saint Petersburg , but after a few months he switched to the Jan Mateijko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow , which at that time belonged to Austria-Hungary . There he studied painting from November 1913 to summer 1914. His family did not agree with this change of subject and stopped financial support for his studies. Regardless of this, he had to break off his studies because of the outbreak of the First World War .

He was married to the dentist Ida Trakiner-Savickienė (1894-1944), whose wealthy (Jewish) family was based in Saint Petersburg . Her father, Leon Trakiner, owned a factory there which was involved in the manufacture of glass products. The marriage produced two sons, Algirdas (1917–1943) and Augustinas (1919–2012). Both were born in the Danish capital, Copenhagen . Jurgis Savickis made it possible for his older son to visit the Free School Community of Wickersdorf from 1930 to 1935 , a reform-educational rural education home in the Thuringian Forest . The marriage ended in divorce in 1935/36. Both sons attended art schools and studied painting, the older Algirdas also English in Switzerland, the younger Augustinas, a member of the Young Communists, and sociology there too. Ida Trakiner-Savickienė committed suicide and Algirda's eldest son was shot in the Kaunas ghetto .

After separating from his wife, Savickis turned to his Danish secretary, Inge Geisler, whom he married in December 1936. They adopted an Italian boy but separated in 1948 without an official divorce. In the last years of his life he lived with a Dutch woman, Maria Kock.

Professional development

Jurgis Savickis (center) with his sons Algirdas (left) and Augustinas (right), around 1929
from left: Valentinas Gustainis (1896–1971), Ida Trakiner-Savickienė and her husband Jurgis Savickis, around 1932
Jurgis Savickis (left) as Lithuanian envoy to Denmark, 1931

Jurgis Savickis initially returned home. In autumn 1915 he moved to Saint Petersburg. From there he was sent to Copenhagen, Denmark, as a delegate of a Lithuanian aid organization for war invalids, in order to work from there on behalf of Lithuanian prisoners of war who had been interned in the German Reich . There he also published articles about the Lithuanian aspirations for independence in Danish newspapers and published books and postcards in this context. In October 1917 he took part in the Lithuanian Conference in Stockholm , which recognized the provisional Lithuanian State Council as the legitimate representative of Lithuania.

As a result of this activity, he was accredited after the end of the war from January 1, 1919 by the newly established Ministry of Foreign Affairs of his country as its official diplomatic representative in Denmark, where he worked until January 20, 1922. He then served as charge d'affaires accredited to Denmark, Norway and Sweden. When the Lithuanian representation had to close in December 1923 due to a difficult financial situation, Savickis was accredited from 1923 to 1927 in Helsinki, Finland. After the Lithuanian coup d'état of December 1926, the new foreign minister redefined the interests of his country and subsequently neglected relations with Scandinavia in favor of the main European powers. The Finnish representative office was therefore closed on July 1, 1927.

From September 1927 to the end of 1929 he was director of the legal and administrative department of the Foreign Ministry in Kaunas, but also director of the state theater there, the largest theater in the country. From January 1, 1930 he was again active in the diplomatic service. As envoy to Denmark, Norway and Sweden, he represented his country with headquarters in Stockholm until 1937, where a Lithuanian legation had again been established. He concentrated on cultural exchange, especially since Scandinavia showed little interest in political and economic contacts with Lithuania. He published works on Lithuanian art in Swedish (1931) and French (1934) and in 1940 published a collection of Lithuanian short stories in Swedish. He traveled by car through Europe and North Africa, about which he wrote three travel books, not travel guides, but a description of his impressions, thoughts and anecdotes. In 1935 he began building a villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin near Monaco in the south of France , which he named Ariogala in reference to his homeland and furnished it with works by Lithuanian artists.

At the end of 1937 he was accredited in Riga , Latvia , where he worked for less than a year. Then he moved to Geneva, Switzerland, to represent Lithuania as ambassador to the League of Nations from 1938 to 1940 . During his tenure, the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop forced the cession of the region around Klaipėda , the Memelland, with an ultimatum to Lithuania , which he passed on orally to his Lithuanian counterpart Juozas Urbšys (1896–1991) in March 1939 . At the end of 1939, Savickis' colleague Jurgis Šaulys took over the Swiss legation, while Savickis was offered a position in the propaganda department of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, which he declined. As a result, during the occupation of Lithuania by the Red Army in June 1940, he was not in his homeland, but on his property in the south of France. There he was visited, for example, by Lithuanian diplomats such as Stasys Antanas Bačkis , Petras Klimas or Edvardas Turauskas (1896–1966), but also by the author Jonas Aistis . He earned his income partly from farming on his estate and devoted himself to his literary work.

He died at the age of 62.

Works

  • Lysskær. The same policy and economic handling in Lithuania . Egmont H. Petersens Kgl. Hof-Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen 1919. OCLC 463610267
  • with Georg Brandes: En rejse gennem Lithuania (A Journey Through Lithuania). Jespersen, Copenhagen 1919. OCLC 464268256
  • Šventadienio sonetai (The Sonnets of Holy Days). Berlin 1922. OCLC 871579628
  • Atostogos (Vacations, 1928)
  • Ties aukštu sostu (By the High Throne). Kaunas 1928. OCLC 7722012
  • Truputis Afrikos (A Little bit of Africa). Malmo 1934. OCLC 63629853
  • Kelionės (Travels, 1938)
  • Raudoni batukai (The Red Shoes), Brooklyn, New York City 1951. OCLC 13568319
  • Šventoji Lietuva (Holy Lithuania). Tremtis, Memmingen 1952. OCLC 834696203
  • Žemė dega (Earth on Fire). Terra, Chicago 1956. OCLC 923568395

literature

  • V. Maciūnas, Jurgis Savickis, Jurgis Šaulys: Jurgis Savickis ir jo laiškai Jurgiui Šauliui . In: Metmenys (Chicago) No. 31, 1976. OCLC 1049552163
  • Janina Žėkaitė: Jurgis Savickis . Pradai, Vilnius 1994. ISBN 978-9-9864-0531-3 .
  • Petras Cvirka, Agnė Iešmantaitė, Jurgis Savickis, Antanas Vaičiulaitis: Pirmieji novelistikos baruose. Antanas Vaičiulaitis, Jurgis Savickis, Petras Cvirka . Žaltvykslė, Vilnius 2007, ISBN 978-9-9860-6219-6 .

Videos

  • Jurgis Savickis with his second wife Inge Geisler, 1939 (1:06 min.) In: YouTube, on: youtube.com (in Lithuanian)
  • Jurgis Savickis on his property in the south of France, undated, probably 1940s (14:30 min.) In: YouTube, on: youtube.com (in Lithuanian)

exhibition

  • On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Algirdas Savickis, a painting exhibition was held in the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, from February 13 to May 21, 2017. Works by Jurgis Savickis, his sons Algirdas and Augustinas as well as his grandson Raimondas Savickas and his great-granddaughter Ramunė Savikaitė-Meškėlienė were shown.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aurelija Pociutė: Jurgis Savickis . In: Bernardinai.lt, on: bernardinai.lt
  2. ↑ Aras Lukšas: Kilnios sielos aristokratas . In: Lietuvos žinios, on: lzinios.lt
  3. ↑ Student directory of the Free School Community Wickersdorf. In: Archives of the German youth movement , Ludwigstein Castle near Witzenhausen in Hesse.
  4. ↑ Peter Dudek : "Experimental field for a new youth". The Free School Community of Wickersdorf 1906–1945 . Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2009, ISBN 978-3-7815-1681-6 , pp. 390ff.
  5. ↑ Danutė Selčinskaja: Algirdas Savickis (1917-1943) . In: Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, at: jmuseum.lt
  6. ↑ Elena Baliuytė: Forms of Self-Awareness in Lithuanian Documentary Literature . In: Mindaugas Kvietkauskas: Transitions of Lithuanian Postmodernism: Lithuanian Literature in the Post-Soviet Period . Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York City 2011, ISBN 978-9-0420-3441-9 , pp. 228-230.
  7. ↑ Augustinas Savickas: Žalia tyla . Tyto alba 2002, ISBN 9986-16-245-9 , p. 18.
  8. ^ Sigutė Radzevičienė: Travels of Lithuanians from Scandinavia. Searching for The Other (= Acta litteraria comparativa, 5. Europos kraštovaizdžio transformacijos: savo ir svetimo susitikimai). 2010, ISSN 1822-5608, pp. 421-422.
  9. ↑ Jurgis Savickis (1890-1952) . In: Lietuvos naujienų agentūra ELTA, on: elta.lt
  10. ↑ Aldona Gaigalaitė, Juozas Skirius, Algimantas Kasparavičius, Audronė Veilentienė: Lietuvos užsienio reikalų ministrai 1918–1940 (PDF file; 46.9 kB). Šviesa, Kaunas 1999, ISBN 5-430-02696-4 , pp. 416-418.
  11. ^ Vytautas Žalys: Lietuvos diplomatijos istorija (1925–1940) . Versus aureus, Vilnius 2007, ISBN 9955-699-50-7 , pp. 490-491.
  12. ↑ Manfredas Žvirgždas, Viktorija Šeina: Savickis . In: šaltiniai.info, on: šaltiniai.info
  13. ↑ Mindaugas Klusas: Didįjį europietį Jurgi Savicki prisiminus . In: Lietuvos žinios, on: lzinios.lt
  14. ↑ Generations and Destinies . In: Lietuvos žydų (Litvaku) bendruomenė, on: lzb.lt
personal data
SURNAME Savickis, Jurgis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lithuanian diplomat, theater director and author
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Pagausantys near Ariogala , Lithuania
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1952