By Juozas Kazlauskas

KLAIPEDA

The port town of Klaipeda, the biggest city in Samogitia and the country’s third city by population, is the best place to start the journey.

The history of this region is complicated. Due to its geographic and economic importance, Klaipeda has long been a battlefield. From the eighth to the tenth centuries the Lithuanian coast was attacked more than once by Vikings. However, later it was a Baltic settlement until the middle of the 13th century when the Livonian Order built Memelburg Fortress. Until the 16th century Klaipeda belonged to the Order, but when it converted to protestantism the city fell to the Prussian dukes. From a fortress, Klaipeda grew to become an important port and trading centre.

In 1919, following the Treaty of Versailles, the city and the district was taken away from Germany and ruled by the League of Nations. In 1923 it became part of the Republic of Lithuania. In 1939 it was occupied by Nazi Germany. Schools were closed and all cultural activities disrupted. After the Russian army drove the Germans out of the town, Klaipeda was returned to Lithuania. While withdrawing, the German army blew up almost all industrial enterprises and destroyed two thirds of the city’s residential buildings.

After the war the port was gradually rebuilt. Fishing and merchant navies were created and a huge shipyard, Baltijos laivu statykla, was built. A new Klaipeda–Mukran ferry line was started. Three years ago an enterprise zone was established to stimulate the city’s economic development.

On the tip of the Curonian Spit separating the port from the Baltic Sea, a Maritime Museum was built in 1973. The museum has been visited by several million people. Scores of penguins have been hatched out and several years ago dolphins started to give regular shows.

Klaipeda has a picture gallery, an exhibition hall, a clock museum and a museum of the natural history of the Curonian Spit. A sculpture park has been created over the last few decades by collecting the work of the participants at sculpture symposiums.

TELSIAI

The Samogitians sometimes say jokingly that a building is “as tall as in Telsiai”. This is not because there are many multi-storey buildings in this city. By saying this they take pride in their capital. Telsiai is a district centre and also the diocesan centre of this region.

The town lies on seven hills next to Lake Mastis. Its name derives from the small River Telse that flows into the lake. Archaeological findings from peat bogs around the lake suggest that people have been living here for at least 6,000 years. Telsiai was marked on 13th-century maps. The first reference to it in Livonian Order chronicles dates from 1450.

Telsiai started to grow in the 17th century. At that time a noblemen’s seimelis (little Seimas) met regularly and the town benefited from trade privileges. When Bernardine monks settled here a baroque and classical church and an abbey were built. Maybe this was an effort to ask for God’s mercy and protection from misfortunes like those that had devastated the town at the beginning of the 18th century when one third of the population died as the result of a massacre by the Swedish army and of plague epidemics.

In 1791 Telsiai received a town charter. The town grew to become a centre for many religious communities. In the 19th century there was a famous school for rabbis where representatives from all over the world came to study. The Russian Orthodox church, built in the middle of the 19th century, is still there.

A bishop’s palace was built and a seminary opened which was closed after the Soviet occupation. It was reopened during the times of the revival movement in 1989.

Up till now the city has retained its status as a centre for Catholicism: the bishop’s palace, Catholic schools and societies are situated here.

Telsiai school has a long history. The first school opened in 1612. Later the city had many gymnasiums. Now there are ten schools and a school of applied arts where young people from all over the country study textiles, knitting, design, woodwork and metalwork.

For over 50 years Telsiai has had the Alka Museum, which houses many items of Samogitia’s distinctive cultural heritage. The collection was built up by enthusiasts, societies and organisations. It includes folk art given by the makers themselves or by their children or grandchildren, materials depicting the cultural life of the region’s estates, its history and nature.

There is also Samogitia’s open-air museum, with authentic buildings from the 19th and early 20th century, and a wooden windmill. Visitors can visit an old smithy in which a fire burns, and watch a theatre company performing in a barn. Folk art festivals and international folklore festivals are held there.

The inhabitants of Telsiai have long been famous for their love of dancing, singing and drama. Besides dance and song groups for all ages, the city has a popular folk theatre that has played to full houses for the last 40 years, not only in Samogitia but also in other cities of Lithuania.

Today the capital of Samogitia covers an area of 1,500 hectares and has more than 35,000 inhabitants. Food processing companies and construction companies are based in the city.

Last year in Telsiai a business centre financed by the Swedish government was opened. Its aim is to help people set up new businesses. Here everybody who wants to can learn about his or her chances for success and about possibilities for establishing relations between the farmer, the producer, the processing factory, the provider of services and the buyer.

SEDA

For those who are interested in wooden architecture and folk sculpture Seda is the place to go. This small town in northern Samogitia was founded near the River Varduva and Lake Sedula at a busy point on important trade routes connecting Livonia and Samogitia. Now it stands at the intersection of six important roads.

The manor was mentioned in the 13th century, but the nearby town, once an important trade centre, was first mentioned in documents only at the beginning of the 16th century.

Here, in an oak wood on a hill near the river, there was once a pagan shrine with a sacred flame which was put out in the 15th century at the time of the Samogitians’ conversion to Christianity. One hundred years later the Church of the Assumption was built in Seda. This is a unique example of wooden architecture. The church has small round windows with yellow, blue and red glass, and five altars which combine professional and folk architecture and painting. The church still has its magnificent neo-renaissance organ decorated with woodcarvings. It is big compared to churches in other towns – it can hold almost 4,000 people. Besides other works of art, the church has eight groups of wooden sculptures about 23 centimetres in height portraying incidents from the Passion by anonymous folk artists. There used to be more groups of sculptures, but now even the remaining ones are not fully preserved. Several figures and many details are missing.

The church is also decorated with 13 oil paintings of the stations of the Cross by Kazys Varnelis, a self-taught painter and maker of small statues, who died at the beginning of the century. He decorated churches and even whitewashed country houses. The biggest and most impressive of his works can be found in one of the 19 stations of the Cross in the town of Zemaiciu Kalvarija. It is a fresco measuring 15 metres by five metres, the only work of folk art of this type in Lithuania.

The evolution of the old town of Seda ended in the 18th century. Then on a bend in the river a new manor house, wooden church and bridge were constructed. Later a stone mill was built near the manor.

Two rows of brick buildings used to stand in the market place. They housed shops and were among the biggest public buildings in the town. Business thrived and the owners used to fill the town’s coffers even after the First World War. As in other small towns, the best plots belonged to Jews and they controlled trade and the taverns. At the end of the 18th century they made up three quarters of the population. The wooden synagogue remains, though all the Jews are gone. During the Second World War the Nazis exterminated the whole Jewish community – of about 500 people.

In the first half of this century over 200 buildings, eight of them brick houses, stood in Seda. There were two schools, a library, a chemist’s shop and a doctor’s surgery. The town had two sawmills, a woolen mill and a flour mill which had an electric engine. Bread was baked in four bakeries and there were six taverns, 55 shops and 20 artisan workshops.

The trade of the blacksmith is one of the oldest in the town.

Vincentas Rimkus, a 77-year-old blacksmith, remembers when he served his apprenticeship in the smithy. He started from hinges and bindings. “At first I made only two or three and later up to ten a day. We had to work very quickly so as not to use too much coal,” he recalls. There was always plenty of work. Their articles were sold by Jews. Some smiths pressed their own signs on to the finished articles and had their own secrets and methods which they did not pass on even to their apprentices.

During the Second World War Rimkus found himself in Germany where he worked as a smith for four years. “Smithies in Germany were much better and had more equipment. There were small engines and a smith did not need to work the bellows himself,” Rimkus remembers. Now he shoes horses and makes agricultural machinery. Fences in different forms (very often used in graveyards) are still the main products. Nobody makes bindings and hinges in Seda anymore – they have been replaced by mass-produced articles.

PLUNGE

This town has one of the country’s biggest and most beautiful parks which occupies a third of its area. An oak tree 25 metres high and 1.2 metres in circumference grows there. In pagan times it was considered sacred and a fire burned under it.

In the 16th century the name Plunge was officially adopted and at the end of the 18th century King Sigismund Augustus II granted Plunge a charter and a coat of arms. In 1807 Russian Tsar Alexander and his retinue came to Plunge and stayed in the palace.

For three centuries the estate belonged to different noblemen. The last owners were Duke Mykolas Oginskis and his wife Marija. They not only built the palace, one of the most beautiful of the 19th century, but also contributed to culture and education in the region.

The Oginskis family, from the 17th century, made a profound impact on the country’s political, economic and cultural life. Many great officers, statesmen and public figures were descended from this family. The family were also famous as music lovers and patrons of composers and performers.

Mykolas Oginskis had an orchestra and a music school to which talented children were invited to study. In 1888, at the age of 13, Mikalojus K. Ciurlionis was among the students there. He was introduced to the basics of the theory of music, learned to play the flute and began composition. After leaving school, Ciurlionis was offered a place at a musical institute in Warsaw and the duke granted him a scholarship.

Oginskis was highly respected for his efforts to educate ordinary people and to support the arts and science. He spoke Samogitian with local people, supported their causes, took care of their welfare and granted annuities. After his death his wife continued the work. She founded an orphanage where about 200 children were brought up.

A collection of portraits of the Oginskis family, consisting of over 100 paintings and sculptures, was formed at the palace. There was a room with old coins, a collection of archaeological finds, a large library famous for ancient scrolls. The Oginskis palace was a shrine to art, music and science.

For 80 years the building was used by the German and Russian armies. It also housed schools and technical colleges. Since 1993 exhibitions of paintings by Samogitian artists have been held there. The premises have been transferred to the Art Museum.

Now, besides permanent and touring exhibitions, world Samogitian art shows will be held every four years. The museum possesses works by Juozas Bagdonas, Ona Cepeliene, Vytautas Ignas and other Lithuanian American artists. It has also received a valuable collection of work by Samogitian artists living in Australia. A collection of other talented emigres – the late Telesforas Valius from Canada, Alfonsas Dargis from Germany, and Adomas Galdikas and Paulius Augius from the USA – is held at the museum too.

Chamber music concerts, poetry evenings and drama performances take place at the museum. Concerts in the open air and inside the palace have been revived and wind orchestra festivals are arranged. Summer schools for schoolchildren and students and outdoor activities for painters are organised at the centre.

(From LITHUANIA IN THE WORLD, No 2, 1998)

© Samogitian Cultural Association Editorial  Board, 1998-2000 Page updated 2003.05.15 . Comments to: samogit@delfi.lt