Art Nouveau District, Riga, Latvia

Riga was a major centre of the Hanseatic League, deriving its prosperity in the 13th–15th centuries from the trade with central and Eastern Europe. The urban fabric of its medieval centre reflects this prosperity, though most of the earliest buildings were destroyed by fire or war. Riga became an important economic centre in the 19th century, when the suburbs surrounding the medieval town were laid out, first with imposing wooden buildings in neoclassical style and then in Jugendstil. It is generally recognized that Riga has the finest collection of art nouveau buildings in Europe. In 1997 the Art Noveau District of Riga was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.





Jugendstil



The Historic Centre of Riga boasts the largest collection of Art Nouveau buildings in Europe. Between 1896 and 1913, the city expanded and a housing boom followed. The style which developed in Riga was influenced mainly by German, Austrian and Finnish architects.



Before World War I Riga was a growing industrial city and the wealth of the 'haute' bourgeoisie naturally found its way onto the facades of their new luxury town homes. Many of the designs were of the Art Nouveau style. I am particularly fond of this short-lived style because so much emphasis was placed on creating something unique, free flowing, and just a little 'off the scale.' ...Not so different from today's avant-garde and in a way it’s uniqueness expresses Latvian’s desire to be free and part of the European mainstream.

















Alberta Street



After the revolution of 1905 a distinctively Latvian variation of Art Nouveau developed, known as National Romanticism. Architects started to use traditional Latvian folk elements and natural building materials. Typical elements were steep roofs, heavy structures and the use of ethnographic ornamental motifs.

Riga as a city made its first mark in history in the 1201. In that year, Albert the Bishop of Bremen established his first German fortress here. With his Knights of the Sword he executed a Crusade to the Baltic’s. The town started to prosper as a trading station. This resulted in joining the Hanseatic League in 1282. What makes it different is something to do with Latvia and Lithuania being the last two European countries to adopt Christianity in the 12th Century and as a result most of the traditional symbols and icons are distinctly pagan. Pre-Christian symbolism persists in Latvian folk tradition and can be seen in Art Nouveau buildings which display the face of Mother Nature and the look of intricately carved wood, both of which are distinctly Baltic features. It's a little eerie (and possibly fun) to walk down a dark side street and notice all these symbols normally associated with witchcraft and the devil.





Mother Nature















Walking around in Riga what most surprises is the eclectic architecture. Notably in the Old Town there is always a medieval highlight next to some Stalinist leftover. This diversity in styles adds a lively atmosphere to the town. Generally, Riga is less an open-air-museum like than Tallinn for example. The main reason for inclusion is Riga's fine collection of Art Nouveau buildings. They can be found a few blocks north from the city center. There are several streets adorned with great specimens. The buildings by Mikhail Eisenstein are well restored and freshly painted. Another feature of Riga are the 19th century wooden buildings. They are less prominent than the Art Nouveau ones, and less often renovated.















The architectural and artistic answer to the literary Modernist movement that began in the late 19th century was the Art Nouveau movement in Europe. The Art Nouveau movement reached its peak in the early 20th century, which is when the majority of Riga’s Art Nouveau houses were built, beginning in 1899. Riga’s term for the movement, Jugendstil, comes from the German and Scandinavian movement named after the avant-garde periodical Jugend (“Youth”). Unlike the stiffer sensibilities of Victorian style, Art Nouveau stressed a complete creative freedom, mixing fantastic elements with a tendency to show all utilitarian construction elements as artistic value, with very characteristic elements such as dynamic, undulating, and flowing lines and geometrical ornaments. In Riga, Art Nouveau could be split into two main directions, decorative and romantic-nationalistic Art Nouveau.





Jugendstil Frauenkopf



Riga is one of the largest centres of Art Nouveau, with more than a third of the buildings of its Central District built in the style; other significant centres include Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna, Krakow, and Moscow and St. Petersburg, among others. The main street for Riga’s Art Nouveau district is Elizabetes, which intersects Brivibas Boulevard. In addition to Elizabetes Street, Alberta and Strelnieku Streets also feature impressive examples of the style. In total, there are over 800 Art Nouveau buildings in Riga, but finding them all would be quite an ambitious undertaking, so I’ll try to guide you to the most noteworthy ones. Significantly, most of the Art Nouveau buildings were designed and built by Latvian architects.











Buildings in the decorative Art Nouveau style by one of the most famous architects, Mikhail Eisenstein can be found at Elizabetes 10a and 10b, as well as at Alberta 2, 2a, 4, 8 and 13. On Alberta 13 stands a building from 1904 which now houses the Riga Graduate School of Law, which is fully restored and publicly accessible. Right around the corner, Strelnieku Street also features eccentric examples of the style. Romantic-nationalist Art Nouveau can be seen in the buildings by Latvian architects E. Laube, K. Peksens, and A. Vanags, such as those on Terbatas Street 15/17 and Brivibas Street 47, 58, and 62. The most famous of the local architects was Mikhail Eisenstein. His son, Sergei, was a pioneer of early cinema. Ironically, Sergei moved to Moscow to make propaganda for the Bolsheviks who despised (and eventually destroyed) the same bourgeoisie that supported his father and fed him as a child.





Art Nouveau Staircase







More information can be learned about Art Nouveau and other architecture in Riga in the Latvian Museum of Architecture located in one of the Three Brothers in the Old Town. The Riga Art Nouveau Centre in Latvia, that used to be linked on the website of the City of Riga, now has its own website where the centre and Art Nouveau architectural heritage of the city are presented and where events related to Art Nouveau in Riga are listed. The Riga Art Nouveau Centre also moved into new premises in the Art Nouveau building located at 12, Alberta Street, the facade having being restored a few years ago and the interior still being in the restoration process.



This is their website; (Only in Latvian at the moment)



http://www.jugendstils.riga.lv/lv



Riga is a rewarding place to visit both for its Architecture and its vibrant urban life. The old town is richly textured with the wondrously titled “House of the Blackheads”, essentially a palace for visiting Hanseatic merchants. Due to their indulgent lifestyle they developed blackheads and turned this into a little joke by calling this rather rich palace after what was originally its nickname! The old town is a rich and rewarding mix with Swedish gun towers, a castle, museums, Art Nouveau district and many fine churches including St Peter’s Cathedral in the Baltic brick gothic style. St Petri has a lift to the top of the steeple affording good views of the city and the river Daugava on which it sits.



I’ll remember it for its energy, sense of purpose and historic and human interest which makes it such a worthwhile travel destination. The persistence of the ideals of personal freedom and free association cemented by trade of the Hanseatic League can be seen in the way the cities of the newly free Baltic countries have readopted their Hanseatic titles after gaining their freedom.



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/08/lbeck-queen-of-hansa.html



My abiding feeling coming back from Riga is how important freedom is to people who have been deprived of it and how much in the West we take it for granted, not something they will ever do in Riga which is watched over by the symbol of Latvian nationhood “The Freedom Monument.” The Art Nouveau District is another testament of the determination of the people of this small nation to look westwards and assert their unique culture, language and cultural identity. It is a deserving UNESCO World Heritage Site.



See also;



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/08/riga-capital-of-country-in-transition.html











For more on Architecture and Design see ArchiBlogs in the Blog sidebar.

We will fight them @ Selfridges

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender,”

Sir Winston Churchill
June 4th 1940

“We shall stop them shopping at Selfridges.”

David Cameron
Tbilisi, Georgia, August 16th, 2008


Mikheil Saakashvili and David Cameron

Well David Cameron knows how to show solidarity with the Georgian Prime Minister and inept military adventurer, Mikheil Saakashvili, with his blood curdling threat to stop Russian Oligarchs shopping in the West End of London. He also agreed to support Georgia’s application to join NATO, you know the anti-Soviet Bloc looking for a new meaning in life and stationing missiles in Poland to fly over Russia on the way to Iran or other “rogue states.” This is not; you will be surprised to hear the Middle Eastern “rogue state” which has attacked each and every one of its neighbours including destroying the EU funded infrastructure of Gaza, dismembering Lebanon, occupying the sovereign territory of Syria, occupying East Jerusalem and the West Bank which it is settling and applying collective punishment to the civilian population (in defiance of the “quaint” Geneva Conventions), which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty and which has developed nuclear weapons. And did I mention that its previous Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, had personally led a terrorist massacre of women and children? During the raid on Qibya in 1953, 69 Palestinians were killed and forty-five houses, a school, and a mosque were blown-up. The act was condemned by the US State Department, the UN Security Council, and by Jewish communities worldwide. And the current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s father was Quartermaster of the Irgun terrorist organisation (you know the guys who killed both the British and UN Peace Envoys and hanged three British soldiers including a Jewish lad from the East End) and Foreign Minister’s Tzipi Livni’s father was the leader of the Irgun group which carried out the King David Hotel massacre which killed 91 people including 17 Jews. And did I mention that a previous Israeli Prime Minister, Menachim Begin was the Irgun leader who gave the order? But less of rogue states with terrorist links, lets get back to the successor of Churchill as leader of the Conservatives.

But whilst PR Dave may not often be compared to Winston Churchill he does know about “fighting them on the beaches” for “Bucket and spade” Dave has shown his true 'blue' colours by holidaying on a £21,000 a week yacht, surrounded by an armada of seven boats of 74 mates and family and banqueting in the finest restaurants on the holiday he would prefer that you didn't see.



Mr Cameron and his family joined 74 friends on seven traditional gulet boats for a week-long tour of the Turkish Riviera which last Friday. Each of the double-masted wooden vessels with 20ft high white sails has its own personal chef, captain and two crew hands. It was Mr Cameron's second holiday within a month, but, unlike the first, he didn't invite the Press along. Three weeks ago the Tory leader and wife Samantha posed for official pictures as he holidayed with his family on a humble bucket-and-spade beach in Cornwall.

With the credit crunch biting, he portrayed himself as a stay-at-home politician in touch with the British electorate. His photo-calls and interviews led even the most loyal Tory newspapers to mock his opportunism. But there was no fanfare at all for his sybaritic week-long tour off Turkey's south-west coast where the former PR executive took advantage of its closeness to the conflict in Georgia and used a private plane for a quick photocall with the Georgian president in Tbilisi.

But by Sunday morning he, Samantha, 37, and their children had joined the sailing party off the Fethiye peninsula to celebrate the 60th birthday of his mother-in-law Viscountess Astor. The total cost of hiring the seven gulets was an estimated £150,000. As the armada organised by Samantha's stepdad, Tory peer Viscount Astor sailed majestically out of Gocek Harbour it looked like a scene from 1970s BBC drama The Onedin Line. Margaret Churcher, 62, on holiday from Leicester with her daughter and son-in-law, said: "They were really impressive they took up the whole bay as they sailed out.”Those are beautiful boats but I'll have to keep dreaming. We were in just a tiny sailing boat that would probably fit in one of their cabins." Mr Cameron, his family and in-laws, were in a traditional gulet yacht called the Sema Tuana which sleeps 10.



By day, they swam in the clear blue sea, laughed with pals and drank bottle after bottle of wine served by the dutiful staff. At night, the Camerons dined at rustic seafront restaurants. The large group of pals ate fresh seafood, Turkish mezes and drank local wines at little restaurants dotted along the rugged Aegean coastline. On Wednesday, they relaxed on plush sofas as the MP for Witney read John Milton's epic 17th century poem Paradise Lost in the 38C (102F) heat. (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/08/surly-republican.html )

After showering and changing on board, scores of diners were ferried to land by inflatable dinghies. That night the party took over the Indigo Terrace restaurant in the pretty Turkish port of Kalkan until 2am before being taxied back to sea on their boats. A total of 76 guests racked up a bill of more than £2,000. Waiter Huseyin Aslan, 32, said: "They were all very wealthy and looked like they were here for a lot of fun. They were well behaved but there was a lot of laughing and drinking and some dancing.

Well as Tony Blair once remarked “If we can’t take that lot apart, we don’t deserve to be in government!” Unfortunately Tony is no longer around to take them apart; he is now a full time “Peace” envoy to rogue states in the Middle East, indeed he even has an office in one, in Jerusalem, and he may even visit Gaza one day or indeed enjoy the typical fish meal by the banks of the Euphrates in Baghdad surrounded by grateful Iraqi’s enjoying the restoration of peace he helped bring about there. Makes sense to me! (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/britain-in-iraq.html )

But there is a serious point to all this. Relations with Russia and Middle East Peace must start on the basis of Realpolitik, not comic book characterisations of Brutish Russians, plucky Georgians, Arab Terrorists, Holier than thou Israel. America and Europe’s overriding strategic interests lie in peace and co-operation with Russia based on mutual respect and understanding and a genuine and enduring Middle East Peace based on justice, not military adventurism subsidized by the U.S. of A. Let us say it loud and let us say it clear, whatever about any other considerations Europe and Europe have no great strategic interests in Israel or Georgia, indeed the opposite case could be made for both.

So let’s get back to reality not the sound bites of the Boy Wonder David’s *, Milliband in Kiev who is more interested in plotting coups at home than preventing them abroad and Cameron whose exercise of publicity without responsibility in Tbilisi gives opportunism a bad name. I’m sure David Cameron has many qualities but like his “holiday” in Devon being REAL is not one of them!

* Note; this is not meant to indicate a prejudice against all Davids.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

In the times of the Soviet Union the archetype of the ideal citizen was characterised as “Soviet Man”, men like the coal miner Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov whose allegedly prodigious output was used as the basis of productivity to launch Stalin’s first 5 Year Plan. Hindsight shows us that Soviet Man was a feature of the propaganda machine rather than a reality and the Soviet Union was not the most productive of society’s but did produce impressive dodgy statistics. One true Soviet Man was Alexander Solzhenitsyn born on the cusp of the Bolshevik Revolution, a brilliant academic who fought bravely for his country in the “Great Patriotic War” and found himself condemned to a labour camp for a harmless remark about “Uncle Joe.” His searing exposure of the inhumanity of the Soviet system destroyed the moral force of communism and reiterated and revealed a universal truth of all totalitarian systems; that inhumanity dehumanises not just the victims of the system but even more so, the perpetrators of the inhumanity.

Russia is in mourning today (4 July 2008) for Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel laureate whose writing helped conquer the tyranny of the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn, 89, suffered heart failure at his home outside Moscow last night. His wife, Natalya, said today: "He was working all day yesterday, as usual. He did not suffer for long. He just became ill in the evening when he had already gone to bed. He wanted to die at home, and he has died at home. He wanted to die in summer, and he has died in summer. He lived a difficult but happy life. And he and I were happy."

Solzhenitsyn's death robs Russia of a hero whose stature was unequalled. The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, described him today as a man of "unique destiny, whose name will remain". At a momentous time in Russian history Solzhenitsyn's quiet and courageous revolt against the evils of Josef Stalin's labour camps became an unshakeable force for change. His books, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago revealed for the first time the horrors of the camps where ordinary Soviet citizens lived and died in unimaginable conditions of hardship and cruelty. Often, their crimes were no more than mild offences against the dictates and ideology of the Soviet system.

Solzhenitsyn after release from the Gulag in 1953

Solzhenitsyn was such a victim. He was born in 1918 in Kislovodsk. World War I had ended disastrously for Tsarist Russia and the nation plunged into civil war between Whites and Reds. Solzhenitsyn's family was white but his father died in a hunting accident before he was born. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy landowner and was persecuted by the newly installed Soviet regime. She was denied permanent employment and labouring alone, her family was forced into poverty from most of the 1920s and 30s. After earning degrees in philology, mathematics, and physics at Rostov University, Solzhenitsyn began teaching in 1941, aged 22 and seemed set for a brilliant academic career. That same year Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn enlisted and rose to the rank of artillery captain. He was decorated twice for bravery but this counted for little when, as the war was ending, he wrote a letter to an old friend in which he referred to the Soviet dictator Stalin as "the man with the moustache". This was considered an act of gross disrespect and he was sentenced to eight years in a labour camp. The Soviets who condemned him to the barren steppes of Kazakhstan could hardly have known it was a move that would contribute to the destruction of their system. Solzhenitsyn began to write, chronicling the minutiae of the camp inmates' suffering and the "crimes" for which they had been sentenced. His first book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, was the story of a carpenter struggling to survive in a camp to which he had been sent, like Solzhenitsyn, after service in the war.

The book was published by order of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who was eager to discredit the abuses of Stalin, his predecessor, and it created a sensation in a country where unpleasant truths were spoken in whispers, if at all. Abroad, the book - which became a major film starring Tom Courtenay - was lauded not only for its bravery, but for the quality of its unsparing prose.

The opening paragraph begins bleakly as it intends to continue;

“The hammer banged reveille on the rail outside camp HQ at five o'clock as always. Time to get up. The ragged noise was muffled by ice two fingers thick on the windows and soon died away. Too cold for the warder to go on hammering.

The jangling stopped. Outside, it was still as dark as when Shukhov had gotten up in the night to use the latrine bucket — pitch-black, except for three yellow lights visible from the window, two in the perimeter, one inside the camp. “

And it continues in the same vein, similar to James Joyce’s prose of “meticulous meanness.” The Soviet system was stripped of ideological baggage and reduced to the systems casual and uncaring callousness and one man’s attempt to cope with its inhumanity and survive one more day. Nothing needed to be added and with the raw power, honesty and sparseness of Solzhenitsyn’s narrative it was not possible to take anything away.

Soviet prisoners on the way to the Gulag

When Khrushchev was removed, in 1964, the KGB re-asserted its control and reintroduced many of Stalin's measures against so-called thought-crime. Solzhenitsyn was again persecuted. His next book, The First Circle, was about inmates in a special camp for scientists who were deemed politically unreliable but whose skills were essential. Solzhenitsyn, a graduate from the Department of Physics and Mathematics at Rostov University, was sent to one of these camps.

The novel Cancer Ward, which appeared in 1967, was another fictional worked based on Solzhenitsyn's life: in this case, his cancer treatment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then part of Soviet Central Asia, during his years of internal exile from March 1953, the month of Stalin's death, until June 1956. In the book, cancer became a metaphor for the fatal sickness of the Soviet system. "A man sprouts a tumour and dies - how then can a country live that has sprouted camps and exile?"

Solzhenitsyn's work gained power from the fact that no one was spared his anger. He attacked the complicity of millions of Russians in the horrors of Stalin's reign. "Suddenly all the professors and engineers turned out to be saboteurs - and they believed it? ... Or all of Lenin's old guard were vile renegades - and they believed it? Suddenly all their friends and acquaintances were enemies of the people - and they believed it?"

The Stalinist era, he wrote, quoting from a poem by Alexander Pushkin, forced Soviet citizens to choose one of three roles: tyrant, traitor, and prisoner. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, a move described by Soviet leaders as provocative. He was banned from travelling to receive his prize, but he wrote an acceptance speech in which he quoted a Russian proverb: One word of truth can conquer the world.

Solzhenitsyn with Heinrich Boll in exile in 1974

And so it seemed when his work gained currency not only in the West, but inside Russia. Underground copies of his books circulated widely among students and contributed greatly to the dissident movement-than sprang up in the early Seventies. He was perceived as an enemy within and in 1974 he was stripped of his citizenship and exiled on charges of treason. Solzhenitsyn went first to Germany and then to the US, where he settled in a dacha-style compound in Vermont, surrounded by birch and pine forests. He yearned to return to his homeland and although his citizenship was restored by Gorbachev in 1990, he refused to go back until the last vestiges of the Soviet regime had been removed. In 1994, he made a triumphant return, marked in a 56-day train journey from Russia's Far East to Moscow.

But if supporters of Western-style democracy believed they were owed a share in Solzhenitsyn's triumph, they were wrong. His vision was not a simplistic view of a struggle between communism and capitalism, in which capitalism was the just victor. He believed Russia to be a civilisation unique to itself, where no known system - including Western democracy - could properly work. While avoiding a partisan political role, Solzhenitsyn vowed to speak "the whole truth about Russia, until they shut my mouth like before".

He was contemptuous of President Boris Yeltsin, blaming him for the collapse of Russia's economy, his dependence on the International Monetary Fund, his inability to stop the expansion of NATO and his fostering of the new Russian billionaires, "oligarchs" such as Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich.

When Yeltsin awarded Solzhenitsyn Russia's highest honour, the Order of St. Andrew, the writer refused to accept it. When Yeltsin left office in 2000, Solzhenitsyn wanted him prosecuted. Solzhenitsyn also criticised Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin, in 2002 for not doing more to crack down on the oligarchs. But then the two men drew together in a move that some perceived as a contradiction. Putin, after all, was a veteran of the same KGB apparatus that had victimised Solzhenitsyn. But the author saw in Putin something more vital to Russia's future, a concept of nationalism and unique destiny. More the pity then that Putin did not read his observation that in the camps of the Gulag that the Chechen’s would die rather than submit.

It was a matter of sadness to many of Solzhenitsyn's admirers that as Putin closed newspapers and tightened the state's grip on free speech and enterprise; the great writer appeared to endorse Putin's vision of a separate political and cultural destiny for Russia. In his final TV interview last year, Solzhenitsyn made clear that Western democracy was not the solution to Russia's ills, and he expressed solidarity with Putin for reviving the country's standing.

"The main achievement is that Russia has revived its influence in the world," he said. "But morally we are too far from what is needed. This cannot be achieved by the state, through parliamentarianism ... As far as the state, the public mind and the economy are concerned, and Russia is still far away from the country of which I dreamed."

Yet Solzhenitsyn was a man of his time, and that time has now passed. For many young Russians he is a distant, historical figure but in his time he was a clarion voice crying out for the rights of humanity against tyranny and it is arguable that his efforts and those of Andrei Sakharov destroyed the central moral claim of communism that its purpose was to create conditions for human happiness and fulfilment.


From the beginning with the 1962 short novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn devoted himself to describing what he called the human "meat grinder". His Gulag Archipelago trilogy of the 1970s left readers shocked by the savagery of the Soviet state under the dictator Josef Stalin. It helped erase lingering sympathy for the Soviet Union among many leftist intellectuals, especially in Europe. But his account of that secret system of prison camps was also inspiring in its description of how one person - Solzhenitsyn himself - survived, physically and spiritually, in a penal system of soul-crushing hardship and injustice.

His later years left his admirers in the West confused but his efforts in asserting the primacy of our humanity and defining Russian identity will endure long after his bones have been consigned to the earth of Mother Russia. The bravery of one man in refusing to accept his fate in the “meat grinder” led to a nation and the occupied peoples of the Iron Curtain also refusing to accept their fate. For reminding us of our common humanity this Nobel Laureate achieved a great deal and by removing the moral rationale from a system which claimed to be justified by moral purpose he changed the world. His moral righteousness will resonate forever where humans are crushed by “meat grinders”, be they in Tibet, Guantanamo, British interment camps in Ireland in the 70's, the CIA Gulag or the 5,600 Palestinian political prisoners in Israel.

South African writer and fellow Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee today described Solzhenitsyn as “a man of immense personal courage, and, as a writer, the one indisputable heir of Tolstoy."

But his message and great polemic gift is perhaps best summed up by a character in the Gulag Archipelago, who observes; “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart”.

Never has the soul and earth of his beloved Mother Russia claimed a greater patriot. Rest in well earned peace, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn.

Solzhenitsyn

Riga – Capital of a country in transition

Riga - Arms of the Towns of Latvia


Bridge of the Locks

Staring out from old black and white 1930’s National Geographic’s are haunting visions of lost worlds bordering the Baltic Sea which were soon destined to disappear. The great Yiddish culture of Poland, the sailing fleet of the Aland Islands, the Hanseatic Free City of Danzig, Königsberg and East Prussia and the three Baltic Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The remarkable thing about the Baltic countries is that they existed at all. Three countries with no real natural borders or great natural features other than rivers into the Russian interior and ports on the Baltic. Three countries with distinct languages, cultures, folklore and music. Three countries who traded in the goods of the Russian interior but who always looked westward and became rich as part of the remarkable enterprise known as the Hanseatic League. Perched precariously on the edge of the Russian Bear which looked upon them uncomfortably as gateways for foreign invaders they were granted their freedom by Lenin in 1918 only to have it snatched away by Stalin in 1938 who put Russia’s strategic interests and defence in the coming conflict first.







Then in 1991, in a remarkable twist of history, one of these lost world in the 1930’s Geographic’s came back to life as the Baltic Republics regained their freedom. So it was with some trepidation as to what I would find I found myself on a plane to Riga, the capital of Latvia, the Baltic Republic which regained its independence has grabbed freedom with both hands – a fact emphasised by the extensive coverage of the recent N.A.T.O. summit meeting in Riga. The mundane nature of a two hour flight from London did nothing to dispel the sense of wonder that I was going to a country which had been consumed by war and the cantharis afterwards and had disappeared from the view of the west behind the Iron Curtain – what would I find there?



Riga itself was a rich Hanseatic City and the Old Town preserves mementoes of its golden age in fine merchant buildings and the massive “Brick Gothic” churches typical of the Baltic’s. Latvia is an absorbing country and a place where things are happening with a fast changing scene since 1991 with enormous change and inward capital flows and expertise from Scandinavia & Germany in particular transforming the country, so there is a real buzz about the place. The Latvians are an interesting people with a distinct culture and language and are Lutheran as opposed to the Russians who are Orthodox. The country has suffered terribly in the 20th Century, being invaded and thrashed in both world wars and being occupied by the Nazis and Soviets. In its history Riga has both benefited and suffered for being a strategically located and important port only 300 miles from St. Petersburg so every invader of Russia attempting to cut off its access to the West and the Baltic has had to take Riga and for the same reason Russia saw holding Riga as important to its defence.





Despite its medieval origins, Riga's uniqueness as a city lies in the fact that it boasts the largest collection of Art Nouveau buildings in Europe. Between 1896 and 1913, the city expanded and a housing boom followed. The style which developed in Riga was influenced mainly by German, Austrian and Finnish architects. Mikhail Eisenstein is one of the most famous proponents of the style in Riga. After the revolution of 1905 a distinctively Latvian variation of Art Nouveau developed, known as National Romanticism. Architects started to use traditional Latvian folk elements and natural building materials. Typical elements were steep roofs, heavy structures and the use of ethnographic ornamental motifs.This style, which at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century referred both to architecture and other fields of art, dominated in Riga for a short time, however, it left behind extraordinary colourful architectural examples.











The most famous of the local architects was Mikhail Eisenstein. His son, Sergei, was a pioneer of early cinema. Ironically, Sergei moved to Moscow to make propaganda for the Bolsheviks who despised (and eventually destroyed) the same bourgeoisie that supported his father and fed him as a child.









Art Nouveau District, Alberta Street



This coincided with the period when construction of high-rise residential buildings boomed in Riga and organically found a place in the architecture of Riga. Art Nouveau emerged in response to previous styles, especially to Eclectics, which required following particular historical styles. In contrast, Art Nouveau stresses a complete creative freedom, an expressive flight of fantasy with a tendency to show all utilitarian construction elements as artistic value. Characteristic features of Art Nouveau - sinuous lines, geometrical ornaments – divided into two main directions in Riga: decorative and romantic nationalistic Art Nouveau. Latvian architects, representatives of romantic nationalism, were E. Laube, K. Pēkšēns, A. Vanags, who created unique examples of national architecture (Tērbatas Street 15/17, Brīvības Street 47; 58; 62). Most characteristic examples of decorative Art Nouveau are buildings in Alberta Street constructed by Mikhail Eisenstein. Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein, (1867, St. Petersburg - 1921, Berlin), was a Russian architect and civil engineer. Being a German Jew, he converted to Orthodox Christianity. He graduated from the Institute of Civic Engineering in St. Petersburg in 1893. He was the designer of a number of the Art Nouveau buildings in Riga. He built several apartment buildings for State Counsellor A. Lebedinsky, including the ones at Alberta iela 4 (1904), 6 (1903) and 13, and at Elizabetes iela 10b (1903).



See Art Nouveau District Riga;



http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/09/art-nouveau-district-riga-latvia.html











His son Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a well-known Soviet film director,paricularly famous for the "Battleship Potemkin" featuring the famous (and oft imitated sequence) of the baby's pram carering down the Odessa steps. It presents a dramatised version of the Battleship Potemkin uprising that occurred in 1905 when the crew of a Russian battleship rebelled against their oppressive officers of the Tsarist regime. Potemkin has been called one of the most influential films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at the World's Fair at Brussels, Belgium, in 1958. Today the superb Art Nouveau district around Alberta Street is an invigorating visual surprise for the first time visitor and a reminder of the pride Latvians felt in their country and the prosperity they achieved in the years of freedom early in the century and between the two World Wars.


House of the Blackheads


Astronomical Clock

There is a real difference between those who are doing well in the new Latvia and those who have been left behind. Housing stock for instance is generally substandard with a mixture of drab and rundown Soviet style apartment blocks and timber houses. There was a row of "derelict" timber houses behind the hotel but when I looked out at night there were lights on so they were inhabited! Surprisingly congestion is an issue in Riga and the Old Town is a congestion charging zone using ticket operated barriers to control access. There is no metro and the public transport infrastructure is clearly struggling with a mixture of trams, trolley buses and even the dreaded bendy buses!

Of 2.3M in the country 1.1M are Russian and this is a real fault line as they don't necessarily have Latvian (and therefore EC) passports and can't apply for government jobs unless they speak Latvian. The renovated medieval buildings and flashy new cars can't hide the fact that Rīga is still the capital of a country on the mend. The city is something like half Russian / half Latvian and the two groups have little interaction or respect for one another.



Riga airport is brand new and impressive and the team flew there on that excellent airline run by an Irish Accountant for £31 return – incidentally Ryanair’s business model is based on SouthWest Airlines which is run by an Irish-American lawyer called Herb Kelleher, who appears in their adverts clutching a glass of whiskey! We bought a package from Activitybreaks.com for £89 which included transfers, two nights B & B, a dinner with wine in a restaurant and VIP entrance to a top nightclub.

Speaking about Team Building, your Riga correspondent was taken with the range of events offered by the local handling agents, Baltic Events (www.eventstravel.net) which range from bobsleighing to flying MIG 21 fighters. The verbatim “Borat” style flyer for his personal favourite, “The KGB Experience” will give a flavour of these unique team events. Next year?

“You are invited to simple city excursion, but suddenly you will be arrested by KGB soldiers. Shooting or just "welcome schnapps". If welcome event, then tourist will be transported into some ugly place and there interrogation - why here? Spies? We will execute you and give to special secret forces....... And then group leader will come to rescue them and pay ransom......don't kill us, we'll pay.
If group has ordered shooting as well, then activity continues, on the way to shooting ground and somewhere on road James Bond or Charley Angels will free tourists and see ........KGB still alive and you all must be ready to defend yourself.”


Vansu Bridge



Stick to sightseeing in Riga! The old town is richly textured with the wondrously titled “House of the Blackheads”, essentially a palace for visiting Hanseatic merchants. Due to their indulgent lifestyle they developed blackheads and turned this into a little joke by calling this rather rich palace after what was originally its nickname! The old town is a rich and rewarding mix with Swedish gun towers, a castle, museums, Art Deco district and many fine churches including St Peter’s Cathedral in the Baltic brick gothic style. St Petri has a lift to the top of the steeple affording good views of the city and the river Daugava on which it sits.










Statue of The Latvian Riflemen



The Latvian Riflemen, whose statue is in front of the Museum of Occupation which documents the Nazi and Soviet Occupations, have a paradoxical place in the nation's heritage. They were formed with local recruits in 1915 to defend central Latvia from German troops, often bearing the brunt of the heaviest fighting. No one fights harder than the farmer defending his own field, after all. They were military heroes of Latvia, but eventually they became disillusioned with their status as cannon-fodder and turned against the Russian Tsar.



The joined the Bolsheviks, playing a key role in Lenin's seizure of power in November 1917. A year later they were given the order to execute the Tsar and his family - a delicate task not suitable for native Russians. Most importantly, they prevented a June 1918 coup that would have surely ended Lenin's reign.



The Latvian Riflemen were instrumental in setting up a regime that would eventually attempt to destroy their homeland's culture. Not surprisingly, today their grandiose Soviet-made statue sits in the middle of a barren bus stop. Still, they disbanded in a positive light and their bravery as Latvian patriots is impossible to ignore.









Zeppelin Markets



Eating out is not a problem in Riga with a wide selection of restaurants, snack bars and coffee shops. Many of the newer ones are very impressive with some very original and entrepreneurial concepts which would travel well – all we tried were excellent value for money with good service. However the two meals I enjoyed most were the cheapest, both left me with change from £2.00. On the first damp & misty morning in downtown Riga myself and a colleague got off a trolley bus by the Occupation Museum (do go and see it) and happened upon a traditional café specialising in pancakes, breakfast, savoury and sweet. Both of us enjoyed good coffee and filling pancakes for less than two pounds in the company of office workers and students who were similarly fuelling up on this cold and damp day. On our last day I found myself in the huge market complex on the edge of the Old Town known as the Zeppelin Market as 5 of the 7 market halls are former Zeppelin sheds transported from East Prussia in the 30’s. There I enjoyed a hearty traditional broth, a cutlet and vegetables and coffee and pastry for £1.70 but more than that in the midst of all the hustle and bustle I enjoyed a window onto ordinary Latvian life. Riga's Central Market has to be one of the biggest I have ever seen. It contains every form of food produced in the waters and fields of Latvia. It's a vibrant place seven days a week with people from all walks of life going about their daily business.






Orthodox Cathedral





Hitler and the Nazis may have lost the war, but they succeeded in wiping out the entire Jewish population of Rīga. Thousands of Jews, 25,000+ from Rīga alone, were murdered in the forest several kilometers outside of town. It was a simple matter for the Nazis because a local Latvian 'security' team willingly did most of the work. It's easy to overlook, but anti-Semitism was a virulent force far beyond the borders of Nazi Germany.



This pile of rubble was the Jewish synagogue. A few days after the Nazis arrived it was torched... packed tight with Rīga's first victims.





Riga Synagogue Ruins



Apart from this one stone plaque, you wouldn't know that this barren wooded park is actually the city's pre-WWII Jewish graveyard. The gravestones were removed and smashed to bits during the war.





Site of Jewish Cemetery



We did encounter some negatives which, whilst not discounting them, gave a frisson to the few days and added to the feeling that you were somewhere different. There is a major sex industry controlled by the Russian Mafioski in Riga. The local what’s on guides have a plastic encased supplement on “Riga at Night” which lists the often dubious “delights” on offer – as everywhere else, tourists should not leave their common sense at home. I wondered why the taxis in the old town where fully loaded Mercedes and BMW’s until I took one and realised they were only shop fronts – your taxi driver can provide everything and isn’t shy about telling you this. I got the distinct impression that if you wanted a Mig 21 it would be delivered to your hotel next morning – cash deal only! As in Russia and the former statelets, those two sides of the same coin, racism and xenophobia are not far below the surface. An Indian friend got abused outside a night club as a terrorist whilst inside the, otherwise impressive, nightclub a colleague got jostled and pushed because he looked “foreign.”

And whilst generalisations are dangerous the dichotomy between young Latvian men and women is both remarkable and highly visible. Latvian women have a well deserved reputation for beauty with an alluring mix of Slavic and Norse features. But more than that, they are serious and hard working grasping and appreciating the opportunities of freedom and education that the New Latvia affords them. The male 18 to 30 demographic gives a very different picture. They have an ex – military air about them, there is very obvious aggression and unattractive machismo on display and a very visible alcohol and drug problem. A small example, the night club had 6 security personnel on duty none of whom I would have picked an argument with and during the course of the night they unceremoniously frogmarched at least 10 drunken / stoned males who were causing problems and dumped them on the pavement outside.






These are as niggles set beside the energy, sense of purpose and historic and human interest to be found in Riga which makes it such a worthwhile travel destination. The persistence of the ideals of personal freedom and free association cemented by trade of the Hanseatic League can be seen in the way the cities of the newly free Baltic countries have readopted their Hanseatic titles after gaining their freedom.

My abiding feeling coming back from Riga is how important freedom is to people who have been deprived of it and how much in the West we take it for granted, not something they will ever do in Riga which is watched over by the symbol of Latvian nationhood “The Freedom Monument.”




Freedom Monument



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