 LITHUANIAN QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
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ISSN
0024-5089
Copyright © 2006 LITUANUS Foundation, Inc. |
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Volume 52, No 3 - Fall 2006 Editor of this issue: Mykolas Drunga |
Culture in Adversity: the Lithuanian DP Experience
LINAS SALDUKAS
The archives specialist Linas Saldukas (Ph.D., 2002) is a research associate at the Lithuanian Emigration Institute and teaches history at Vytautas Magnus University. He has pursued postgraduate studies at the Central European University in Budapest and at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Saldukas has authored one mongraph and a number of articles.
At the end of World War Two, all of Europe lay in ruins and ashes. Of the 1.8 million unfortunate refugees who had inundated the countries of Western Europe by 1945, most had nowhere to return to. Some had lost their homes forever. Among these refugees were over 200,000 nationals of the three Baltic countries, who, having experienced the horrors of Soviet terror during 1940-1941, had fled in well-founded fear ahead of the Soviet Army, which had again invaded their countries in 1944. Roughly 63,000 of these refugees had been residents of Lithuania.1
Due to the geopolitical situation of Lithuania, the Lithuanians mainly fled straight to Germany, while many of the Latvians and Estonians reached the Swedish coast first. Most of the Lithuanians settled in zones of Germany that were occupied by the Western allies, and the rest settled in Austria, Denmark, and Italy. These people met with more favorable fates than the Lithuanians who had remained in their country, and far better ones than those who were forcibly exiled to Siberia and other distant territories of the USSR. At the time these refugees were fleeing Lithuania, they certainly could not guess their ultimate destinies. All they knew was that they were facing the unknown, heading into a sort of total vacuum.
Essentially, this wave of emigration was completely different from any of the previous ones. It was a mass political emigration – the first time this had happened in Lithuanian history if we do not count the emigration of the noblemen that followed the 1831 and 1863 insurrections. It was very significant that these people did not consider themselves emigrants. They viewed themselves as refugees or exiles. Mykolas Krupavičius, the Chairman of the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania, speaking for virtually the entire exile community, defined their responsibilities as follows:
This is how we are going to struggle with reality from the losers’ position. The reality is the occupation of Lithuania. The losers are we, the political emigrés. Political emigrés are not capitulators – they go to battle against the occupier. Only the method of battle has changed – because it has become necessary to fight from the losers’ position. That reality, the occupation, is not forever; it’s temporary. But it must be swept away from the country. That’s why the objectives of the emigrés must be maximal, and in a sense, extremist.2
Another difference between this and preceding waves of mass emigration lay in social status. In this instance, most emigrants were well-educated, professional people who had held reasonably high positions in Lithuania, or had been respected artists, clergymen, scientists, and the like. About 50 percent of the academic staff of one major university of Lithuania – Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas – had fled the country. Similar figures were true for the other schools of higher education and creative arts unions.
It is the purpose of this article to describe the situation of the Lithuanian refugees who left Lithuania at the end of World War Two, the diversity of their cultural life in the Displaced Persons (DP) camps of West Germany, and how their cultural activities were influenced by their new living conditions and their political situation.
The conditions in the DP camps were badly suited for any kind of political struggle. Residents had few legal rights. Political actions were usually limited to sending reminder petitions about the severe situation of Lithuania to the world’s powerful. International intercessions into these affairs were sought at the Vatican, in the United States, and in Great Britain. The Community of Lithuanian Displaced Persons that had formed in 1946 held a general meeting for representatives from all the German districts. There the attendees learned that there was very little chance for any Lithuanian living in Germany to further the cause of Lithuanian freedom. Representatives were now convinced that the political situation of Lithuania would not change any time soon, and that, as a report on this meeting stated, “…our most important assignment at present is political action to reinstate the freedom of our homeland. […] The most important goal of this political action is not to permit our issues to fade from sight. The fundamental means of attaining this goal is propaganda.” 4
Education
For most people, cultural activity was probably the one sphere of relatively free expression, and it eased the usual gloom of existence. Its first and most frequent manifestation was the creation of schools at different levels. There were a great many teachers, as well as families with children, amongst the refugees. The immediate needs were (1) to provide teachers with a chance to keep up their professional practice and (2) to begin or continue schooling for the children. Many kindergartens and elementary classes for the youngest children were opened. Additionally, by 1945-1946 in the three Occupation Zones (U.S., British, and French) into which the western part of Germany had been divided, there were 20 Lithuanian high schools with 455 teachers educating 2,442 students and 14 junior high schools with 143 teachers educating 502. The peak period of the entire schooling system was 1946-1947. The numbers of schools, students and teachers began to decline rapidly at all educational levels from the start of the 1948/49 school year onwards.5
In general, establishing Lithuanian (and, for that matter, any other national) high schools was far from easy. Having a sufficient number of potential students who might want to study at a high school was the first problem. Then a UNRRA permit, which was not readily issued, had to be gained. Even though the UNRRA publicly declared their support for schools, their highest priority tended to be hospitals.6 Once a permit was issued, another frequent problem was locating adequate facilities for a high school. Displaced Person camps were often set up in former German Army quarters, which had been damaged and wrecked during the war. The working environment in the schools, once organized, was also inhospitable. Classes were overcrowded; students at various class levels would sometimes have to study in one room. Shortages of school supplies and furnishings were real, and the facilities generally lacked heat. At first, teachers worked without any compensation. It took time before they were able to get some sort of a salary with bonuses paid out in cigarettes, bread, butter, and other products. On a psychological level, the organization of Lithuanian schools helped to set aside thoughts about personal tragedies and to provide a purpose for daily existence. The refugees especially needed this in their present situation.7
Teaching plans at all junior high and high schools were being organized along much the same lines as the programs that had operated in Lithuania before the war. The only difference was that more attention was paid to foreign language subjects to better adapt to the existing conditions. The teaching programs emphasized English and French. Probably, people had some idea of their soon-to-come destinations, where these languages would be more needed than German. Stability of teaching programs was meaningful in several ways: for one, there wasn’t the time or circumstances to prepare new programs because no methodological assistance from the UNRRA or any other organizations was forthcoming; secondly, most believed, at least early on, that they would be returning to an independent Lithuania and that learning would continue along the same lines as before, for which the existing teaching programs were entirely suitable. Hence the greatest attention was paid to teaching the Lithuanian language. It was the key ethnolinguistic feature of nationality. Other subjects of importance to national identity were not neglected either, including Lithuanian history, geography, and religion (Roman Catholic for the most part). Religion had played a major role in national self-awareness over the entire 22-year period of independence, and it was expected to provide immunity against foreign influences during times that were psychologically and physically difficult for people suddenly and unexpectedly finding themselves very far from home.
Many refugees who had lost their usual positions in life and were now forced to live in a foreign country prized vocational training. It was primarily the intelligentsia in professional fields that had ended up in the DP camps. They had worked for various governmental institutions in Lithuania and had often held high-ranking positions. Chances for landing an equivalent position in Germany, as well as later in other countries abroad, were unrealistic. Thus learning the fundamentals of some sort of practical work became essential. Adult education had been foreseen within the Education Conception of the Community of Lithuanian Displaced Persons organizations. The aim was to assist adults in providing themselves a basis for a new life in a foreign country or in independent Lithuania. From the 1947 school year onwards, certain vocations were being taught at 28 many of the high schools, so that the students could at least find temporary work. The most popular vocations were seamstress, tailor, and electrician. Top attention, however, was paid to the provision of vocational education that was geared not only to high school students but to all others as well. At the camps that were densely populated by Lithuanians, specialized courses and occupational schools were organized. Training was generally led by craftspeople who were operating their own shops at one camp or another to supply various services for residents. The UNRRA was also often involved in setting up courses taught in German or English for the advantage of many different national groups at the camps. Efforts were also made to train specialists for work in other countries to where the refugees were preparing to emigrate. At certain camps, vocational training would be offered for more than one trade. For example, by early 1946, schedules for as many as nine trades were being offered or in process of being organized at the Würzburg Lithuanian Camp. There, an idea had come up at the local branch of the Union of Lithuanian Engineers in Exile to establish an adult education center which “could be like a school of higher education with 2 – 3 years of study, because there are many refugees who have studied at the higher technical schools in Kaunas and Vilnius, […] but did not graduate.” 8
The educational system wouldn’t be complete without a university education. Here it is very important to stress the common project of representatives of the three Baltic nations to found a Baltic University in Hamburg (later transferred to Pinneberg). The idea of establishing a national university in Germany seemed to be too difficult for the Lithuanians to act upon alone. Latvian and Estonians refugees, whose social class distribution was similar to that of the Lithuanians, were facing the same kinds of problems in providing for continuing studies. It was only natural that the intellectual elite of these countries, finding themselves on a course of no return, began thinking of rekindling university level studies in their refugee communities. The objectives in planning for the university included more than merely satisfying pragmatic interests such as generating work for instructors and providing students with meaningful ways to spend their otherwise empty days at the DP camps. The cooperation of the three Baltic nations gave rise to a more liberal agenda in terms of national and other issues. Advocacy of new ideas and creation of an environment conducive to generating them were great achievements of the Baltic University in fostering the development of liberal intellectual thought in exile. These results became apparent later in the U.S. and in other countries to which most of the refugees from the Baltic countries moved. There, organizations of a more liberal philosophy began being formed, including ones similar to the Lithuanian Santara-Šviesa Federation. Equally important was the fact that Baltic University gave students a chance to continue with uncompleted, or begin new, courses of study.
Here are some relevant statistics. Lithuanian academicians comprised approximately 30 percent of the teaching staff, a figure that was appropriate to the three nation make-up of the University. Latvians comprised about half of the teaching staff, a fact that is explained by their greater number in the British Occupation Zone where the University was located. The student distribution by nationality was similar. Student numbers were highest at the start of the second semester in the summer of 1946. At that time, out of a total of 1,294 students, 641 were Latvian, 455 Lithuanian and 198 Estonian. These numbers do not indicate that the Lithuanians were less willing to study than the Latvians: they are based on the objective fact that there was simply a lower concentration of Lithuanians in Northern Germany, the British Occupation Zone, than in Southern Germany, the United States Occupation Zone, where most Lithuanians lived.
All in all, 76 students graduated from Baltic University: 53 of them were Latvian, 16 Lithuanian, and 7 Estonian. Two 30 of the Lithuanians were granted doctor’s degrees.9 No matter that the university functioned only a short time (from March 14, 1946 until Sept. 30, 1949); it was a unique phenomenon in the entire history of Displaced Persons, and it strongly influenced the pursuit of higher education amongst all émigrés over time. Thus, 296 Lithuanian students studied at the international UNRRA university in Munich,10 numerous other Lithuanian students chose universities at Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, and Stuttgart. A grand total of 2,185 Lithuanians from the occupational zones of West Germany were pursuing higher education.11
Institutions of higher learning other than universities, which provided specialized education, were also active. The best known of these was the Applied Arts Institute, established in the French Zone at Freiburg by Lithuanian artists (some 25 had fled west), among whom Vytautas Kazimieras Jonynas was foremost. The Institute started working on July 11, 1947,12 with departments in painting, sculpture, graphics, textiles, and ceramics. In the words of artists who were employed by this Institute and were reviewing the student exhibition at Freiburg: “you might think that you had actually found yourself at one of the art academies of Kaunas or Vilnius.”13
The educational system at the displaced persons camps played a key role in the upbringing of a new generation of Lithuanians, as well as in the planning and later operations of the Lithuanian World Community.
Publishing
The publishing of books, newspapers and magazines also became an important part of leisure time activities for a large part of the Lithuanians at the camps. No sooner had Lithuanians settled in the DP camps than they started publishing. This had already developed as a strong tradition back home. Pupils and students needed textbooks and other kinds of literature because only very little of it had been brought in from Lithuania. The beginning was incredibly difficult, but as soon as the war ended and Lithuanians had settled into the DP camps, the first daily news bulletins appeared. These were written on the basis of the news on the radio about important world events. There was space in the bulletins devoted to describing the realities of camp life as well. By the end of 1945, many such wall bulletins advanced to the category of pieces printed by rotary presses. The peak was reached in 1946, when 104 publications were being reproduced in this manner.14 As the conditions for publishing improved, a great amount and variety of press products became possible. Specialized books in the sciences, culture, and literature emerged. News bulletins did not disappear from the camps; they simply took on a different nature, becoming more oriented to the problems of individual camps. Their publication was the simplest and did not require licenses. Permission for the publication of a variety of periodicals had been gained in as many as a hundred camps (of the 113 in which Lithuanians lived).15
The main printed Lithuanian newspapers, five of which were edited in the American and British zones,16 paid the greatest attention to international political news, particulary when it was relevant to the Baltic countries. Much space was devoted to news about the life of Lithuanians in the DP camps and to reviews of cultural programs. Magazine publishing faced even greater obstacles than newspapers. The need for greater quantities of paper and their unstable periodicity were linked to postwar shortages. Nonetheless, there were actually 17 magazines published from 1945 to 194917 in all three Occupation Zones. A third of them ran for less than a year. Periodicity was very irregular for most – completely out of line with the initial planning. A characteristic feature of magazines published in the camps was the self-description of each as a periodical of culture and the arts. Young and energetic writers, journalists, academicians, and artists initiated new publications, seeking to satisfy the need for cultural expression.
Most newspapers and magazines published in Germany contributed to the formation of a democratic, pluralistic society and gave Lithuanians practice in different modes of thinking. Conditions for forming divergent opinions in the autocratic Lithuania of prewar days had been poor, thus the role of the media was of great importance in offering alternative ideas.
The shortage of academic literature prompted a second printing of certain titles for which only single copies could be found in Germany.18 This situation also put pressure on Lithuanian academicians to publish the results of new research. These publications generally included dissertations that had been defended in Germany, offprint articles, and original studies in philosophy and history.19 The printing of academic literature, however, was not a top priority because it was relevant to only a comparatively small group of people.
Schoolbooks, on the other hand, enjoyed a much greater readership among teachers and students because they could not get along without them. Many textbooks selected for reprint were initially rewritten by hand. Due to the paper shortage, the rotary method was used to copy a small number of issues. This problem was resolved over time, and by about 1947 more and more school texts actually got to the printing houses. A total of 172 textbooks and teaching materials were issued over the entire life of the camps. Foreign languages, especially English, were important subjects for publishing texts and various types of dictionaries. Not just students, but a large part of the Lithuanian community as a whole used these texts.
But it was unquestionably fiction that took the top in quality for the entire spectrum of book publishing. Literature by Lithuanian authors predominated in this category of books. Lithuanians wanted to read anything that reminded them of life in Lithuania, and fiction satisfied their yearning.
In concluding our remarks on the publishing of books in the DP camp period, we note that 775 books (of which 216 were fiction) were published during the 1945–1950 period.20
Amateur Cultural Activities
Amateur cultural activities were widely popular with Lithuanians at DP camps. Song and dance ensembles and choirs sprang up at all of the camps densely populated by Lithuanians. Self-expression was an essential need for many. Every singer and dancer, and everyone in the audience, would be pleasantly reminiscing about the Lithuania they had left behind and the songs and folk dances they had all once performed. It was deemed necessary to present Lithuanian culture as broadly as possible to high-level visiting UNRRA (later – IRO) officials, to parlamentarians of the Allies, and, of course, to local Germans.
Musical groups formed on the basis of church choirs, generally as soon as some enthusiasts would appear to lead the new endeavours. These enthusiasts usually cropped up from among the composers and conductors who had achieved some level of fame back in Lithuania, but were now trapped in DP camps. The greater the level of creativity that a group could achieve, the more wide-ranging would be its tours of performances. The Čiurlionis Ensemble of National Music was unsurpassed; it can be regarded as the most professional of all the Lithuanian song and dance groups in the refugee camps. It was significant that the performances by this ensemble preserved authentic forms. Listeners would hear the music as it was heard in the villages of Lithuania. Foreign audiences were also able to evaluate the work of the group accordingly, seeing in it the true essence of the Lithuanian nation. The very existence of this ensemble proved to be the perfect “diplomatic delegation” for Lithuania, with the proviso that, unlike true political delegations, it was always eagerly awaited and appreciated. However, just as for everyone else, the situation worsened for collectives in the arts after the 1948 monetary reform.
Theater
The vibrant theater traditions that had formed in interwar Lithuania also left their traces in the refugee camps. Among the refugee population there was a large proportion of artists from the Lithuanian Drama and the Lithuanian Opera and Ballet Theaters. Some 300 persons in various genres of the theater arts had fled to Germany. Professional work was essential for these people; they did not want to lose their skills. Though they found only minimal resources, they did begin acting again. Even so complex a genre as opera was revived. An operatic troupe found the wherewithal to stage Rossini’s The Barber of Seville on February 25, 1947 in Detmold. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all the teamwork did bear fruit, and the reviews of the performance were excellent.21
Quite a few of Lithuania’s ballet dancers also wound up in Germany. Statistics indicate that there were 27 of them. Once the decision was made to form a ballet troupe in Augsburg, dancers came in from other camps and zones as well. Coppelia by Delibes was selected for production, and rehearsals began in June 1947.22 The troupe was ready in record time. The premiere occurred on July 28th at the Augsburg Theater. Ballet may be the international language of dance, but in this case, Lithuanian artists alone achieved all the acclaim. Their basic objective was to represent Lithuania by proving that even under the most difficult circumstances, ballet performances could be staged. In this case, the situation was somewhat easier in that this ballet had been previously performed on stage in Kaunas. Critics responded with enthusiasm; they noted that this restaging of Coppelia seemed to be an entirely new arrangement.23
Lithuanian stage drama developed even more extensively as an art form in exile. Amateur theater groups formed at several camps, actually wherever a group of drama enthusiasts happened to live. The specifics of this art did not require as much preparation as opera or ballet did, and quite a few drama circles came into existence. The Lithuanian Theater at Augsburg, which officially formed on June 10, 1945, was one of the first to begin work. At its nucleus were well-known actors and actresses from theaters in Lithuania. This troupe was not the only professional group in the DP camps. Another Lithuanian theater troupe named Aitvaras took shape in the British Occupation Zone at Detmold. The next rather large group of drama enthusiasts gathered at the Hanau camp. This group made no pretense of being a professional theater, but it experienced considerable success. The true benefit that it offered was in training young thespians. Amateur theater groups also performed at other DP camps: Ravensburg, Kassel, Ingolstadt, Spakenberg, Seligenstadt, and Lübeck. Though they were entirely amateur, they did manage to satisfy most desires for seeing Lithuanian plays in their local camps.
Conclusions
In the DP camps the diversity of Lithuanian cultural life, even under extreme conditions, was enormous. It included schools, periodicals, and a variety of artistic endeavors. Pride of place was given to education, which at that time and later was held up by many high-principled Lithuanian community leaders and press personalities as being the best means of preparing oneself for future life challenges.
Institutions of primary, secondary, and higher education, all established under abnormal conditions, not only managed within a short period of time to suspend cultural degradation, but also to bring to life certain innovations. The cultural identity of the nation, thanks to conscious educational and cultural efforts, was more and more dovetailed with the conditions of life in the Western world. It was a painful but modernizing process, especially as seen from a current perspective, when other new and old waves of emigration come together.
The experience gotten at DP camps was successfully deployed later, when Lithuanian refugees started living in other countries. The U.S. Immigration Service shows a count of over 30,000 Lithuanian immigrants from German DP camps arriving during 1948-1951 for permanent residence under the regulations of the Displaced Persons Act. More than 10,000 Lithuanians arrived in Canada; almost the same number reached the Australian continent. Some 7,000 Lithuanians remained in West Germany, others left for other countries. The World Lithuanian Community, the common organization for all Lithuanians worldwide, was established on June 14, 1949 by the Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania, acting in lieu of a Lithuanian government in exile. Actually, the primary work of communities in various countries involved keeping the Lithuanian language and culture alive and transmitting them to the younger generation. Schools and performing groups were formed, a Lithuanian press took shape in many countries, and church services were held in Lithuanian. Certain similarities between the activities of the refugees at German DP camps and those throughout the World Lithuanian Community nowadays are evident. In each case, culture was the sphere most widely developed. Culture remains the basic way for all Lithuanian communities to preserve Lithuanianism around the globe even today.
1. Lietuvių Enciklopedija,
Vol. 5, 1955, 148.
2. Krupavičius, 1959, 14-15
3. Tupčiauskas, 1993, 72.
25
4. LTB apygardų
atstovų suvažiavimo pranešimas, 84.
5. Švietimo
įstaigų 1945/46–1948/49 mokslo metų statistika, 1.
6. Wyman, 1998, 99.
7.Op cit., 241.
8. Memorandum No. 23 from
the Würzburg branch of the Union of Lithuanian Engineers in
Exile, s.14
9. Puzinas, 1977, 50-51.
10. Gimbutas, 1997, 144.
11. “Bendras Vakarų
Vokietijoje studijuojančių lietuvių skaičius 1945
– 1948 m. laikotarpyje”, s.4.
12. Ibid.
13. Vambra, 1948.
14. Palukaitis, 1993, 37; s.
171.
15. Ibid., 30-36.
16. Op. cit., p. 141.
17. Op. cit., p. 147.
18. Misiūnas, 1997, 8.
19. Op. cit., 18.
20. Lietuvių
enciklopedija, “DP”, Vol. 5, 1955, 155.
34
21. Aidai,
No. 1, 1947, 37.
22. Memorandum from A.
Kalvaitis, 1947, s. 61.
23. Vilimas, 1947, 90.
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