Suiti

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Suiti (more rarely: Suyty) is the name of a Catholic minority in Latvia, which is otherwise mostly Protestant, Orthodox or atheistic . According to their own and some Russian information, the Suiti living in the west of Courland are not Latvians , but their own ethnic group. Overall, almost a fifth or even a quarter of Latvia's residents are Catholic (440,000 to 550,000 out of 2.3 million), most of them live in the east of the country in Latgale .

distribution

This group of Catholics, who call themselves Suiti, live in a relatively closed area that extends over 402 square kilometers and is said to have around 2800 inhabitants. The center of the area are the localities (villages) Alsunga (German: Alschwangen) in the west of the Kuldīga district and Jūrkalne in the south of the Ventspils district.

tradition

The Suiti became (again) Catholic in the 17th century when Count Johann Ulrich von Schwerin, who ruled Alsunga, married a Polish woman and therefore converted to Catholicism. Johann Ulrich is said to have called Jesuit missionaries into the country in 1634 , but was poisoned in 1636. When the noble family von Schwerin sold the land to the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia in 1728 , Catholicism was already firmly anchored in the small region. In addition to St. Michael's Church in Alsunga, the Suiti have two other Catholic churches in Jūrkalne and Gudenieki.

The Suiti are said to have isolated themselves from their Protestant neighbors and refused to allow interreligious marriages. In the course of this almost four centuries of self-isolation, a variety of Latvian developed enriched with Polish, German, Lithuanian and Liv influences . It is documented by thousands of folk songs (allegedly 52,000). The ethnologist Ludis Bērziņš first brought a Suiti choir to Riga in 1924. From 1926, the ethnomusicologist Emilis Melngailis devoted himself to studying the Suiti folk songs. Two Catholic non-governmental organizations are publishing their own district newspaper for Suiti today (Суйтский край, Suytskiy kray). In October 2009 the Suiti culture was added to the list of intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO and is therefore under protection.

Problems with the administrative structure

Since 2007 the Suiti have been protesting against the administrative reorganization of Latvia , through which their settlement area was divided into the districts of Kuldiga , Alsunga and Ventspils . In order to emphasize the demand for a separate administrative district, it was decided on November 24, 2008 to establish a state of its own for one day on the day of the local elections scheduled for June 6, 2009. This declaration of independence caused a relatively large coverage in the mass media and on December 18, the establishment of a separate Alsunga district within the boundaries of the former municipality was approved. An annexation of the other settlement areas of the Suiti to this district is still pending.

documentary

The document filmmaker Ināra Kolmane shows the life of the Suiti in her film “Ručs un Norie” (2015), shot in Alsunga and Japan, about the deep friendship between an old Suiti (Marija Steimane) and the young Japanese ethnologist (Norie Tsuruta).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Regnum.ru, November 24, 2008: Католическое меньшинство Латвии намерено создать независимое государство (Catholic minority of Latvia plans an independent state)
  2. ↑ cf. TaschenAtlas European Union, page 157. Gotha 2007 with Fischer Weltalmanach , page 302. Frankfurt 2008
  3. ↑ suitunovads.lv: English Summary
  4. ↑ suitunovads.lv: Map of the Suiti area
  5. ↑ Suitu valoda , accessed on March 22, 2020 (Latvian).
  6. ↑ folklora.lv: Ethnographical Ensemble Suiti Sievas
  7. ↑ RIA Novosti, November 24, 2008: Латвийские суйты отстаивают единство своей исторической территории (Latvian Suiti insist on the unity of their historical territory)
  8. ↑ http://www.suitunovads.lv/lv/suitu_novada_veidosana/ accessed on July 28, 2011
  9. ↑ Kristīne Matīsa: Filmas Ručs un Norie recenzija. No sirds uz sirdi . In: Diena , May 6, 2015 (Latvian), accessed on July 23, 2018.