Rainis

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Rainis (disambiguation) .

Rainis (1865-1929)

Soviet postage stamp for the 100th birthday of Rainis (1965)

Rainis (actually Jānis Pliekšāns , often incorrectly Janis Rainis , born August 30, ^jul. / 11. September  1865 ^greg. In Dunava at Jakobstadt , Courland Governorate , Russian Empire ; † 12. September 1929 in Majorenhof (Riga beach) ) was a Latvian poet , playwright , translator and politician who is widely regarded as the most important writer in his country.

Life

Jānis Pliekšāns was the second of three children of the farmer and his wife Krišjānis Pliekšāns Darta on the estate in the municipality Varslavāni Dunava on the Daugava River , halfway between Jacob town and Daugavpils ( Latvian Daugavpils born). His parents recognized his extraordinary talents early on and enabled him to attend the German secondary school in Grīva (today a district of Daugavpils) from 1875 to 1879 as a pensioner. In 1879, thanks to excellent academic achievements, he was able to switch to the renowned humanistic city ​​high school in Riga , the he graduated in 1883. There he became friends with Pēteris Stučka , who later married his sister Dora Pliekšāne. As a high school student, Jānis Pliekšāns began to study Latvian folklore and wrote his first poems.

In 1884 Pliekšāns began studying law at the University of St. Petersburg and at the same time continued to collect Latvian folk songs and sagas. With Pēteris Stučka, with whom he shared a room, he published - anonymously - a small volume of partly cheerful, partly satirical epigrams and poems under the title Mazie dunduri ( Little Brakes ). After his legal exam in 1888, Pliekšāns was for a short time a judge at the court in Vilnius , then a lawyer in Mitau ( Jelgava ).

From the beginning of the 1890s, Jānis Pliekšāns - now under the nom de plume Rainis - turned entirely to writing. From 1891 to 1895 he was editor (at times editor-in-chief and co-editor) of the Riga newspaper Dienas Lapa ( Tagblatt ), the mouthpiece of a group of young intellectuals, the New Current . In August 1893 he took part in the Third Congress of the Second International in Zurich ; On the way home he smuggled two suitcases of German-language socialist literature that August Bebel had slipped him into the Baltic Sea governorates: writings by Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky .

From then on, Raini's viewpoints of the socialist worldview were incorporated into his contributions to Dienas Lapa and speeches by August Bebel and Paul Singer were printed. The pressure of the Tsarist secret police Okhrana on the sympathizers of the New Current grew stronger; Rainis was forced to resign from the editorial office and leave his homeland. In 1896 Rainis spent some time in Berlin and began translating Faust . Then he worked as a notary in Panevėžys . There he was arrested in May 1897 for "subversive activity" as a result of his membership of the New Current , first imprisoned in Liepāja and then sentenced to five years' exile. In the same year he married the poet and playwright Elza Rozenberga, known by her poet name Aspazija . They met in the editorial office of Dienas Lapa in 1894 when Aspazija demanded an account from the publisher Rainis for what they considered to be an unjust criticism of one of their plays. Now they got married so that Aspazija could accompany Rainis into exile. They spent a short time in Pskov , then in Slobodskoi . During the years of his exile, Rainis translated Goethe , Schiller , Heine , Shakespeare and Pushkin and wrote the poems that he published in 1903, the year he was released from exile, in the volume of poetry that was first published under the name Rainis: Tālas noskaņas zilā vakarā ( enraptured moods on a blue evening ).

Rainis and Aspazija, memorial plaque in Zurich

In the Russian Revolution of 1905 , Rainis and Aspazija supported the revolutionaries. As a result, they had to flee into exile in Switzerland after the crackdown on the revolution. They found accommodation in Castagnola , a suburb of Lugano , and temporarily also in Zurich.

Rainis and Aspazija were only able to return to the now independent Latvia in April 1920 . They were received like heroes. Rainis founded the progressive Daile Theater that same year and became its first director, before taking over the management of the National Theater from 1921 to 1925 .

Works

Rainis' oeuvre includes twelve volumes of poetry and twenty dramas such as Uguns un nakts ( fire and night , 1905), Zelta zirgs (1909, German Das goldene Ross , 1922), Indulis un Ārija ( Indulis and Arija , 1911), Pūt, vējiņi! (1914, German Dünawind , 1927), Jāzeps un viņa brāļi (1919, German Joseph and his brothers , 1921). His complete works exerted a significant influence on the Latvian language , especially through his groundbreaking translation of Goethe's Faust . The folkloric symbolism he used in his more important works influenced the development of the national identity of Latvians.

His dramatic ballad Daugava (1916) contained the express demand for Latvian sovereignty : “Country, country, what country does our song call for ? / Country, it's a state ” . The censors removed these lines when the work was first published in Moscow . After the defeat of the German-Russian Bermondt Army in November 1919, this ballad was performed in the National Theater to honor the first anniversary of the Latvian declaration of independence ; many soldiers carried this text with them in battle.

Political activity

In addition to his literary work, Rainis also worked socially and was an influential politician at times. Rainis was a member of the Central Committee of the Latvian Social Democratic Labor Party , sat in the Constituent Assembly elected in 1920 and in the Saeima, and was Minister of Education from December 1926 to January 1928. Rainis aspired to become Latvian president and lost political influence when he failed.

Posthumous reception

The Soviets raised during the decades of occupation of Latvia Rainis' socialist convictions out (his picture appeared u. A. On a ruble -Note and on a stamp). His ballad Daugava and other patriotic texts were omitted from the editions published before the restoration of Latvian independence in 1990 .

The setting of the Saule, Pērkons, Daugava section from Daugava by Mārtiņš Brauns in 1988 quickly became very well known during the Singing Revolution and the regaining of Latvia's state independence and has since become a regular part of the Latvian song and dance festivals .

Commemoration

• In 1965, the year of his 100th birthday, a Rainis memorial was erected on the Esplanade in Riga. It is a focal point for the national poets' festival held annually (on his birthday), a meeting place for left-wing parties and occasionally a meeting place for demonstrations. Since 1990 , the Rainis and Aspazija memorial commemorating him and Aspazija has been located in Majori in Jūrmala . Aleksandra Briede created another monument . The house where he died in Jūrmala, the Rainis and Aspazija summer house , was converted into a museum in 1949.
• In 2006 a plaque was unveiled at Usteristrasse 14 in memory of Rainis and Aspazija, who lived in exile in Zurich in 1912.
• In 2005 the Latvijas Banka issued a commemorative coin with a face value of 1 Lats . The inscription around his portrait on the lapel is a Rainis quote and a motto: “Vienmēr viens un pats” (always one and the same).

literature

• Heinrich Riggenbach: Janis Rainis. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . December 16, 2011 , accessed December 15, 2019 .
• Friedrich Scholz: The literatures of the Baltic States. Their origin and development (= treatises of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften , Vol. 80). Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1990, ISBN 3-531-05097-4 . On Rainis, pp. 310-311.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Gundega Seehaus (ed.): Rīga ūdenī. Latviešu dzejas izlase / Riga in the water. Selection of Latvian poetry . Tapals, Riga 2004. ISBN 9984-720-66-7 . P. 27.
2. ↑ James D. White: The 1905 Revolution in Russia's Baltic Provinces . In: Jonathan Smele, Anthony Heywood (eds.): The Russian Revolution of 1905: Centenary Perspectives . Routledge, London 2005. ISBN 0-415-35568-0 . Pp. 55-78.
3. ↑ Sarmīte Pijola: aspects of Latvian literature from 1905 . In: Norbert Angermann , Michael Garleff , Wilhelm Lenz (eds.): Baltic provinces, Baltic states and the national. Festschrift for Gert von Pistohlkors on his 70th birthday. Lit, Münster 2005. ISBN 3-8258-9086-4 . Pp. 303-319, especially pp. 309-319.
4. ^ Friedrich Scholz: The literatures of the Baltic States. Their creation and development . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1990, p. 213.
5. ↑ Volker Hagemann: Riga Tallinn Vilnius: The capitals and the most beautiful travel destinations in the Baltic States , 3rd edition 2015, ISBN 978-3897943339 , p. 102 ( online )
6. ↑ z. B. there demonstrated opponents of the Latvian educational reform (because of Rainis' commitment to the establishment of schools for the national minorities ).
7. ↑ Description of the coin ( Memento of the original dated November 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of the National Bank, accessed on February 5, 2015; the page is currently unavailable (accessed February 4, 2019), an alternative description can be found on the commercial website e-lats.lv. 

Web links

Commons : Rainis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Rainis in the catalog of the German National Library