Res Humanitariae

The aim of the paper is to reveal how Latvian writers described the Curonian Spit, its inhabitants, nature, and other realities in their non-fiction. To this end, the methodological approach of literary imagology studies is applied. The focus is on the 1930s and the 1960s, when the spit featured most prominently in the works of a wide range of Latvian authors, including both well-known literary classics and less prominent writers. The research demonstrates that in the 1930s, writers focused primarily on New Curonians who spoke a distinct Latvian dialect, and were perceived as a geographically detached and exceptional part of the Latvian nation. Their works reflected a desire to support the preservation of the community’s language and identity. In the 1960s, and somewhat later, non-fiction writers of Soviet Latvia usually gave only marginal attention to New Curonians. They were mostly interested in the uniqueness of the natural environment and the landscape of the spit, which was often poeticised.

The major for archeology of southeast Baltic of an era of Vikings are Korallenberge connected among themselves the settlement and Stangenwalde burial ground. These monuments of archeology are located in southwest part of Curonian Spit. The thesis about synchronism and communication among themselves “before - and early Ordertime” time in O. Tishler and other Prussian archeologists of the XIX century of doubt didn’t cause these two monuments. Nowadays this point of view was supported by R. A. Shiroukhov. Got by excavation on Korallenberge settlement the material allows to call into question synchronism of this settlement and a soil burial ground of Stangenwalde. The joint analysis of the finds occurring from these monuments to archeology, allows to assume that the population which has left traces in settlement activity on a platform of the settlement of the X-head of the XII centuries, buried dead on a site of a burial ground of Stangenwalde, while unknown to archeologists.

The article discusses the data provided by visitation of 1569 of the parish of Kuncai in the Curonian Spit in the context of all the visited parishes in Semba diocese. An attempt is made to review the scale of the rooting of confessional norms in daily life, the quality of clergymen‘s education, the level of parishioner indoctrination, the material situation of the parish, etc. The visitation acts are examined through the prism of the aspect of confessionalization, and the characteristics of the process are identified: the priests’ personalities and performance are studied, as well as their control of the subordinates on the basis of the confession, the collaboration of the secular and church authorities, etc.

The article reviews tombstone inscriptions of Klaipėda Region cemeteries of the late 19th to mid-20th c. from a linguistic viewpoint. The inscriptions are German or Lithuanian, less frequently bilingual (in German and Lithuanian on the same tombstone). The greatest attention is paid to the Lithuanian inscriptions, with the focus on their vocabulary and morphology. Moreover, the principal linguistic characteristics of personal names are discussed.

The fact that the Curonian Spit is one of the most important landscape icons of East Prussia is substantiated by reports from the travels and literary works of numerous German authors. This paper analyses articles on the Curonian Spit that were published between 1920 and 1939 in the “Ostdeutsche Monatshefte” journal that was one of the most important cultural magazines focused on the issues of the “German East”. It served as the basis for a description of elements that created the “ambience” (Georg Simmel) of this East Prussian landscape icon (dunes, the sea, the bay, the world of birds, and the ubiquitous moose), and its perception as a specifically German landscape, particularly in the inter-war period.