Res Humanitariae

During the ‘Khrushchev Thaw’, the Soviet government eased its anti-religious policies, and this opened up the possibility for the Lithuanian Lutheran Church to publish its first postwar hymnal. However, due to its too ‘modern’ language, the 1956 hymnal was not introduced in parishes, but was only intended for personal use. The demand for a hymnal in line with the modern Lithuanian language remained relevant. Therefore, the 1970 synod decided to prepare a hymnal, the texts of which would be closer to the old hymns in the 1936 Lithuania Minor hymnal. The hymnal was published in 1982, and was introduced for use in many parishes. The third edition appeared in 1988. The article describes the challenges the Church faced in preparing a hymnal during the Soviet period, both internally and from the atheist Soviet government, which viewed religious literature as the manifestation of a foreign ideology.

The article examines the Lutheran liturgy in a theological and historical context. It analyzes its structure, surveys the criteria for liturgical reforms in the sixteenth century, considers the possible classification of a wide variety of Lutheran agendas as well as the influence of pietism and the Enlightenment on the liturgical life of the church. Particular attention is given to the Prussian Union and its agenda which has awakened a new liturgical sensibility among the Lutheran Churches and prompted them to re-appreciate their confessional and liturgical heritage, leading to the preparation of new agendas that more clearly reflected their confessional identity. The influence of liturgical movements on the sacramental life of the church and the results of the liturgical reforms carried out by the Lutheran churches of the United States, Germany, and Scandinavia in the twentieth century are also considered.

Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714–1780), poet of Prussian Lithuania of the epoch of Enlightenment, who was first turned into a symbol in the late 19th c., for more than a century has been one of the brightest memory sites in the region. The paper analyzes the contexts in which the symbol was actualized in Prussian Lithuania and Klaipeda Region in the late 19th to the late 20th c. The change in the interpretations of Donelaitis is presented: from the resource for the maintenance of Prussian Lithuanian regional patriotism, a symbolic figure of Lithuanian national culture, to the Sovietization of Donelaitis and his turning into a resource for the maintenance of the Lithuanian national uniqueness within the boundaries of the USSR. The analysis of the meaningful content in which the symbol of Donelaitis functioned and of its symbolic expressions proves that, over all the analyzed period, Donelaitis has been a figure that encouraged not only the convergence of cultures, but also a conflict.

The creative heritage of Kristijonas Donelaitis makes us focus our attention on Prussian Lithuania as an ethnocultural region that provided the poet with significant creative impetuses; simultaneously, Donelaitis is associated with the Kingdom of Prussia as the space that formed his personality, the contours of his worldview, and his national self-awareness. To deeper understand the works of Kristijonas Donelaitis as a significant layer of Lithuanian cultural heritage, it is important to study in-depth the modern approaches to Prussian history and, in that context, the stereotypical interpretation of some aspects of the history of Prussian Lithuania in Lithuanian historiography of the 20th c., relevant to the present. The article analyzes the essential characteristic of Prussian history emphasized by its contemporary researchers, i.e. the spirit of contrast: the interchanging periods of modernity and regress have allegedly predetermined “the special way” of German history, Sonderweg, which preconditioned the dominance of nationalsocialism in 1933. Moreover, the issue of the contrast as the predominating motiff in the master narrative (Meistererzählung) which makes a strong impact on the collective memory is highlighted, as well as the reflection on the issue in the field of the studies of the history of Prussian Lithuania.