Klaipėdos universitetas

Research was conducted in a group of alternative healing practitioners, focusing on their approach towards ‘health’ and ‘illness’ in Lithuania at the begining of the 21st century. The research took place during the author’s qualitative (empirical) research in the biggest cities of Lithuania from 2016 to 2019 (the research is continuing). It was detected in 30 in-depth interviews with practitioneers of alternative healing that individuals reflect on their ‘illness’ and ‘health’ (well-being), and interpret it in a philosophical-metaphysical dimension. The study of data disclosed approaches towards ‘health’ (wellness) as harmony, a balanced state between the physical (outer) and one’s inner world, like ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ worlds in their constant dynamics and mutual resonance. Meanwhile, ‘illness’ is understood as a loss of harmony, ‘the true path’, or purity.

The German army entered the Russian Empire in the spring of 1915, and by the autumn it had occupied most of the territory on which later the independent state of Lithuania was founded. For almost three years, from the autumn of 1915, the area was governed by the Supreme Commander in the East (Oberbefehlshaber Ost), i.e. military administration. Mainly on the basis of the newspapers published in the Ober Ost area in the years of the First World War, as well as other sources, the author seeks to show how German soldiers, and Germans in a broader sense, saw the area of the prospective Lithuania and its population that it occupied in 1915. The paper analyses the impression the land and its inhabitants made on German soldiers and commentators, and examines how those impressions combined with previous ideas about Eastern Europe.