Vilnius (October 2018)
Visiting Vilnius/Lithuania at the invitation of our Lithuanian-American-Porto-guese-Globetrottting-Friend Romas and his charming family, in order to celebrate a retrospective of his father’s work on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Romas Viesulas (Sr.) was a Lithuanian emigrant in 1945, whose prints celebrate both Lithuanian heritage and loss as a key element of the human condition. He graduated from French art school in Freiburg (French occupation zone) and Paris, before heading out to Philadelphia where he became a professor and raised his family.
For those interested, here is an interview from 1975 with Romas’ father, where he explains his artistic themes, motivations and techniques:
To mark the centenary, the Viesulas family estate is creating a grant for artists displaced by conflict, natural disaster or injustice, emulating Romas Viesulas’ experience as a displaced artist. For inspiration and how you, too, can contribute to this wonderful initiative, please see:
Also hugely impressed by this proud small nation (2.8m people), which in 2018 – like Poland – celebrates the 100th anniversary of re-gaining independence, having been dismembered in the 3rd Polish Partition in 1795 by Austria, Prussia and Russia (Poland and Lithuania were a commonwealth since the Lublin Union of 1569).
They celebrate their mediaeval dukes, warriors and state-builders (with fearful names like Gedeminas, Vytautas, Mindaugas et alteri), and are cheekily proud to have been the last European nation to adopt Christianity in 1387. Apparently, Pagan beliefs and rituals were also followed thereafter, as adopting Christianity was seen as an expedient way to finally see off the repeatedly invading German crusading knights -- ideologically misguided invading Germans being a recurrent theme of history in this part of Europe …
If its early history was not difficult enough, its 20th century historic ruptures read like a single sequence of misfortunes:
WW1 – Two years of German occupation
1918 – Regaining Independence
1920-39 – Poland annexes the capital Vilnius; nonetheless a blossoming of society and culture ensues, including 102 working synagogues in Vilnius, with Jasha Heifetz (violinist) and Marc Chagall (painter) among the foremost Jewish artists; 36% of Vilnius population is Jewish, living together with Poles and Lithuanians and Russians
1941-45 – Nazi occupation, leading to extermination of 95% of Vilnius Jewry
1945-1990 – Soviet occupation
1991-93 -- 1991 Declaration of Independence from USSR, and successful overcoming of Soviet/Russian resistance to Lithuanian independence, including economic blockage and military aggression
2004 – Joining EU and NATO
[Heifetz is held to be the best violinist of all times, for more on him, see:
Chagall does not need an introduction, his paintings also evoke a world gone, that of the Jewish shtetl:
https://www.artsy.net/artist/marc-chagall]
While the current Jewish community is still very small but rebuilding (one working synagogue), to Poles this is still very much part of their active heritage. Poland’s ‘Goethe’, Adam Miciewicz, lived here, and its 20th century literary noble prize winner and Californian émigré, Czeslaw Milosz, also studied here in the 1930s and left part of his heart here:
“Nigdy od ciebie, miasto, nie mogłem odjechać. Długa była mila, ale cofało mnie jak figurę w szachach” – „Nigdy od Ciebie, miasto”(„ Never from you, o city”) – it is one line of Czesław Miłosz poems cut on the stairs in the Old Town of Vilnius.
Nearly all of my girls have been on extended school trips here, and in the old town you see as many Polish school classes as Russian-speaking visitors from neigbouring Ukraine, Belorussia and Russia, with all three languages spoken on a regular basis.
Vilnius is said to contain the largest old town in Europe, and with its many baroque and renaissance churches, palaces, university, cobblestone streets and sights it is certainly one of the most beautiful ones. Its demographic evolution reflects the historic ruptures, giving it the dubious epitaph of being the European capital with the largest demographic changes in the 20th century (sources: Wikipedia, Lituanus; beware of potential bias depending on who performed the census on what methodology).
1897 (Russian census): Jewish (40%), Polish (30%), Russian (21%), Lithuanian (2.4%), German (1.4%), …
1916 (German census): Polish (50%), Jewish (43%), Lithuanian (2.6%), Russian (1.5%) …
1931 (Polish census): Polish (66%), Jewish (28%), Russian (3.8%), Lithuanian (0.8%), German (0.3%), … Vilnius had approx. 450,000 inhabitants before WW2
1944 (Soviet data): Polish (79%), Russian (9%), Lithuanian (8%), Jewish (1.4%), … Vilnius had some 107,000 inhabitants at the end of WW2
1989 (Soviet census): Lithuanians (50%), Russian (20%), Polish (19%), Jewish 1.6%), …
2011 (Lithuanian census): Lithuanians (63), Polish (17%), Russian (12%), Jewish (0.4%), …
If one is aware of all that history, and all these odds stacked against Lithuanian independence and this small nation, to be able to experience the vibrancy, creativity, beauty and proud independence as manifest in its lively capital is a true privilege and pleasure.
For a longer essay on Vilnius and its multi-cultural legacy and related nostalgia, see:
https://www.eurozine.com/vilnius-the-city-as-object-of-nostalgia/
For further reading, I just ordered Alfred Doeblin’s ‘Reise in Polen’ (1926), where the German author and journalist famous for his novel ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ describes visiting the many Jewish communities in Poland and Lithuania, and how impressed he was by both spirituality and intellectual vitality; below is an summary of the book’s English-language 1991 translation:
“He observed Jewish life in all the cities on his itinerary: Warsaw, Vilnius, Lublin, Lvov, Cracow, Lodz, and everywhere he had experiences that deepened his knowledge of Judaism. He walked through neighborhoods, listened to people tell stories – he loved folk tales, visited schools and synagogues, and sought meetings with important rabbis.
What he saw in Warsaw, his first stop, amazed him. He was totally unfamiliar with the appearance and the customs of very observant Jews which struck him as medieval. And he was appalled by their poverty and living conditions. He describes with great vividness his experience following the crowds to the cemetery the night before Yom Kippur and how many wailed at the graves of members of their families. In Wilno (Vilnus) he learned about the Gaon of Vilna and the Ba’al Shem Tov and their adherents. In Cracow he learned about the mysticism of Cabbalah through some of its texts and was fascinated.
Doblin characterizes as soulless and anemic the intellectualizing of Western Europe and extolls what he sees as the vibrancy and cohesion of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. For example, he cites his own educational experience as typical of Western Europe: What he remembers is that the teachers were authoritarian and focused on discipline. In Poland he seeks out the opportunity to observe classes in Jewish schools where he finds that learning is a communal affair and teachers and students work together to interpret the text.
Throughout this memoir Doblin expresses his strong feelings about borders, and he uses the line from Schiller, “For every border wields a tyrant’s power” as its epigraph. He expresses much frustration and despair about the deleterious effects of nationalism on all people and property. In many places he visits he still sees evidence of unrepaired destruction that occurred during World War I. But he’s also alluding to other kinds of borders – the “border” between Christianity and Judaism, which he questions, and the various “borders” that separate the sects of Judaism. He advocates universalism in politics and religion.”
Source: http://compellingjewishstories.blogspot.com/2013/10/journey-to-poland-by-alfred-doblin.html
PS: And you don’t want to play basketball against these guys, they are good! (Just like the Slovenes, another small beautiful country caught up in the Soviet sphere and playing hoops above its weight!)
