Klaipėdos universitetas

The Venclova House-Museum is probably the most discussed museum in Lithuania today. Not only are the museum’s activities and the communication of the collection discussed, but also the general question of the need for and value of this museum. In February and March 2022, a study of the museum’s performance was carried out on the Internet. The research highlighted the main and the most debated problems relating to the communication of the museum, as well as identifying fundamental communication errors which have been made by this cultural heritage communication institution. During the research, parallels between the process of museum decolonisation (which is currently taking place in museums all over world), and the main communicational issues of the Venclova House-Museum were also identified. The study includes a semantic analysis of the museum’s performance on the Internet, a qualitative content analysis of discussions on Facebook, and semi-structured interviews with participants in the discussion.

This study presents the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of an educational programme that combines an online game and an outdoor activity with mobile learning in science education. The object of the study is to test the capacity of the programme to integrate science, culture and the environment, while transferring knowledge about marble. To this end, we align our theoretical orientation with the overall project design to devise an initial scheme that is pilot-tested by 155 university students of early childhood education and evaluated through a questionnaire. Qualitative data through participants’ feedback after the programme, observation notes and data from video recordings supplement the overall assessment. The results show high levels of satisfaction among the participants in terms of the quality of the activities, the distance between stations, the duration and structure of the programme, contact with marble, and the knowledge acquired.

Changes in the political power and the population in the southern part of East Prussia, which went to Poland in 1945, led to the removal of traces of the German past in the region, and to its Polonisation immediately after the war. After discussing the de-Germanisation policy, typical of the postwar period, the removal of symbols of ‘German power’, the elimination of the ‘German spirit’, and trends in the adaptation of the new population to the cultural landscape, the author raises the question how relations between the population of the territory and the German heritage and past changed after 1989. The issue is considered in the context of the discussion among intellectuals in Poland as to what the relationship with the German heritage should be. The answer is based on the results of a sociological poll carried out by the Institute for Western Affairs in 2001.

The paper characterises the several-decades-long process of rehabilitation of the prewar cultural heritage in the Kaliningrad. After the northern part of the former East Prussia (Königsberg, and since 1946, the Kaliningrad Oblast) had been annexed by the USSR, and after basically a total change of the population had taken place, the authorities started to Sovietise the region. Knowledge of the prewar past was prohibited from the very beginning, and Stalin-era propaganda formed the founding myth of the Kaliningrad region with reference to the notion of ‘a Slavic land from time immemorial’. Despite the significant shifts that took place in the process of research into the history of the Kaliningrad Oblast during the Soviet period, carried out by historians from Russia and other countries, the adaptation by the postwar settlers to the socio-cultural landscape remains a poorly researched theme. The paper argues that the rehabilitation of the prewar (and primarily German) cultural heritage took place all through the Soviet era, by gradually converting the initially alien environment into their own. Ultimately, a fundamental shift took place in the cultural memory of Kaliningrad’s inhabitants; from the fear of staying ‘in an empty land’, they moved to the compatibility of ‘memory and desire’: the understanding that the metaphor of ‘paradise lost’, which revealed the nostalgia of the former inhabitants of East Prussia, also defined the feelings of Kaliningrad residents for the land that had become their home.

The paper analyses the impact of his interest in 19th-century East Prussian ethnic culture on the activities of Richard Jepsen Dethlefsen (1864–1944), one of the pioneers of monument protection in the region. Dethlefsen’s important activity in the area of recording and protecting the East Prussian cultural heritage also implied an acquaintance with the cultural values of Prussian Lithuania, whose roots were formed by the Reformation in the Duchy of Prussia; by Romanticism, which actualised the history of Prussia and the Prussian tribes; and a few other factors. Despite the impact of nationalism paradigms in the German Empire in the late 19th century, Dethlefsen’s activities contributed to the understanding of the intentions of his contemporaries to consider East Prussia as a unique cultural space, whose historical conditions predetermined the survival of the uniqueness of several ethnic regions, by emphasising it as a value of the East Prussian province to be protected. The concept of pluriculturalism of the former East Prussia, as revealed in Dethlefsen’s work, remains a relevant guideline for cultural heritage policy in west Lithuania (the former Klaipėda region).

The paper is a keynote address to the conference ‘Contacts and Cultural Transfer in the Historical Region of East Prussia (1700–2000)’ that took place in Nida in September 2013. It considers what the East Prussia region means, and what it is associated with today, after it stopped existing 70 years ago. The question is asked what the current situation of East Prussian historiography is, and potential directions for the development of new relevant research are outlined. The author argues that in the process of the cognition of East Prussia, a shift was made from the conservative system of meanings, developed mainly by the former local elites in Germany after the Second World War, to the cognition of regional diversity, which existed before the era of nationalism, and to coping with national narratives about East Prussia. Simultaneously, in the former territory of East Prussia, which currently belongs to Poland, Russia and Lithuania, individual elements of the past of the region continue to occupy an increasingly important role in layers of the local identity, and form opportunities for local cultures of remembrance.

The article analyzes the issue of East Prussian meanings in the environment of Prussian Lithuanians in terms of their “mental maps” and “symbolical geography”. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the communication channels that affected the process of mental appropriation of “our own region” – East Prussia – by the ethnic group of Prussian Lithuanians. The significance of the historical tradition related to the reformationist provision of protection of the status of the Lithuanian language in churches and schools of Prussian Lithuania, as well as of the periodicals published in Lithuanian at the turn of the 20th c. in East Prussia, is emphasized, as it is considered to be a significant communication channel that formed the conception of East Prussia, a close and “one’s own” space from the geographical, administrative-political, and civilization viewpoints. The analysis is oriented towards the problem of “appropriation of the past”, and it contributes to the understanding how the meanings of East Prussia topical for Prussian Lithuanians formed and which symbols marked the presently imaginary spaces identified with East Prussia and Prussian Lithuania/ Lithuania Minor as its part.

The concept of contemporary identity guides to exclusiveness of culture’s role and history as well. Queen Luisa is not only an attractive symbol while talking about fatal period for Europe and Prussia in the years 1806–1815, but also interesting is her personality while looking for parallels between identities of Memel (Klaipėda), the small province town of the German empire, and Klaipėda, the largest contemporary Western Lithuanian city. Present inhabitants of Klaipėda pay a lot of attention to Queen Luisa’s merits for development of education and culture in the city and in the region. The fact that in newest discussions about Klaipėda’s vision of cultural politics, the need to integrate cultural heritage into consciousness of citizens and formation of identity is highlighted, testifies about signs of new quality in region’s identity structure of Western Lithuania. Research is based on historical sources and literature.

The essay introduces the Gramscian concept of hegemony to the study of identity politics, with a special focus on the distinction established by Jean and John Comaroff between hegemony and identity. The case of Catholic identity in Lithuania is used as an illustration why identity politics tend to fail when they are perceived to serve the ends of ideology rather than creating a hegemonic consensus.

The region of Lithuania Minor to which the northern part of the Curonian Spit belongs, has been characterized by changing national affiliation in the course of the twentieth century (Germany, Soviet Union, Lithuania) and the resulting change of population. The following article analyses how different social actors have recurred to and managed the Curonian Spit’s cultural heritage. It shows how Curonian cultural heritage has been mobilized for the making of nationalist identities. Taking the case of the village of Nida (Nidden) it is shown that heritage is nothing fixed or given but is, in fact, produced over the course of time depending on the political, economic and social interests of the social actors involved as well as on the societal background. The example of the Curonian Spit and the making of cultural heritage is a contested and flexible process. Heritage is nothing fixed or given but is made and remade over the course of time, depending on the political, economic and social interests and power resources of the social actors involved. My examples have shown how the production of Curonian heritage has flexibly contributed to the making of German, Soviet as well as Lithuanian identities.