Klaipėdos universitetas

The article shows the First World War as a ground-breaking time for the consolidation of the national identity of Lithuanian physicians, and their coordination as a professional group with a precise commitment to the nation and the nation-building process. While physicians’ commitment to hygiene dates from the period prior to the outbreak of the First World War, the war created material conditions which enabled the widespread comprehension of the importance of hygiene in the life of the nation, and the growth of physicians’ sense of professional-intellectual agency within the ethnic community. The need to provide medical aid in a context characterised by epidemics and deteriorating hygiene was a precondition for much stronger coordination among physicians, with the aim of optimising relief efforts. Furthermore, the spread of epidemics was used as a reason for strengthening trust between medical personnel and the population. The difficulties which characterised health care in the early phase of the Lithuanian nation-state (lack of money, shortages, irrational features of the health-care system, etc) made the implementation of the ‘national hygiene’ programme impossible in the short term.

The German occupation of Ober Ost during the First World War represented an undeniable incentive for further nation and state-building in the occupied lands. Although in the early 20th century education societies had already spread their networks, it was during the years of the German occupation that the centralisation and consolidation of the education network could take place. Regardless of the fact that some ideological divisions between education societies endured, both the limitations imposed by the occupying regime and the existence of a relief committee, the Lithuanian War Relief Committee, with the task to coordinate virtually all Lithuanian activities, functioned as means of rationalising the whole education system. Not only did the Lithuanian War Relief Committee try to overcome ideological divisions in the field of education, but its quasi-state structure also helped to create, finance and effectively direct the whole official network of Lithuanian educational institutions.