constructing national identity: the image of the medieval grand duchy of lithuania in lithuanian art...

© W. S. Maney & Son Ltd 2010 DOI 10.1179/174582110X12871342860207

central europe, Vol. 8 No. 2, November, 2010, 158–80

Constructing National Identity: The Image of the Medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Lithuanian Art from the 1920s to the 1990sGiedre JankeviciuteLithuanian Institute for Culture Research, Vilnius, Lithuania

This article provides an overview of the ways in which the image of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania, intended to awaken the national pride and contribute to the building of the national identity, was constructed by artistic means in the Republic of Lithuania during the 1920s and 1930s. It contains a brief discussion on the genesis of the image of the Grand Duchy, including the selection of appropriate historical heroes and events, and the main aspects of their interpretation. The article analyses some of the most striking and infl uential examples of the image of medieval Lithuania, such as the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the death of Grand Duke Vytautas the Great in 1930 and art works created for that purpose, the decoration of public buildings (for example, the Museum of War and the Offi cers’ Club in Kaunas, and Lithuania’s pavilion in the New York World Fair of 1939). It also looks briefl y at the dissemination of the image of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in popular culture. The article also touches on isolated efforts by a number of intellectuals to warn of the dangers inherent in the extreme glorifi cation of the past. The image of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania, created in interwar Lithuania, was preserved during the period of Soviet occupation. After the restoration of Lithuanian independ-ence in 1990, this image had a signifi cant infl uence on the mentality and culture of Lithuanian society at the turn of the millennium. In this respect the situation in Lithuania could be treated as a case study, for a similar relation to the past can be encountered in other European post-Communist countries faced with the problem of creating a new identity.

keywords art and history, historical images, national identity, visual culture, Lithuanian art, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Republic of Lithuania, Vytautas the Great

159CONSTRUCTING NATIONAL IDENTITY

The title of this article features three subjects: the creation of national identity, the

image of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and a particular chronological

period. Why this combination? At the end of the First World War Lithuania regained

her independence, which had been lost at the end of the eighteenth century when

the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was destroyed. A nation-state existed for two

decades, following the proclamation of the independent Republic of Lithuania on

16 February 1918 until the Soviet invasion on 15 June 1940. The experience of inde-

pendence between the two world wars had a signifi cant infl uence on the mentality of

the society in the ‘second’ Republic of Lithuania, which regained its independence in

1990. Without understanding this experience it is impossible to explain various facts

and phenomena in modern Lithuanian culture that relate to the relevance of the

heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Of course, it should be remembered that

the ‘fi rst’ Republic of Lithuania’s focus on the Middle Ages was by no means excep-

tional in interwar Europe. The citizens of the independent republics of Poland

and Czechoslovakia also sought their medieval roots; medieval history has also fed

modern German, Hungarian, French, and Scottish nationalisms, to name but a few.1

Explorations of the interwar refl ection of the heritage of the Grand Duchy of

Lithuania should be treated as a part of the study of European nationalism in the fi rst

half of the twentieth century.

The declaration of Lithuanian independence on 16 February 1918 opened a new

chapter not only in the history of Lithuanian statehood, but also in the history of

social mentality; an extremely important component of the latter was the search for

national identity. Citizens of the newborn Republic of Lithuania faced the novel

challenge of reconciling the idea of statehood with their awareness of Lithuanity as

it had developed in the previous half-century or so. These two elements shaped a

search for identity that was refl ected and encouraged by various cultural events and

works of art.

Certainly, contemporaries tended to see Lithuania fi rst and foremost as a young,

dynamic state that sought to modernize its economy and culture in order to close the

gap on other, more fortunate, European countries. On the other hand, the search for

national roots — the signs and shapes of the ‘pure Lithuanian spirit’ — encouraged

an active interest in the past. What was the past that Lithuania could build upon? In

the collective memory, Lithuanity was associated with two cultural layers: that of the

peasant heritage and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania submerged in the mists of the

distant past — a multinational state ruled by dukes of Lithuanian origin, which

stretched from the Baltic to the Black Seas. In Lithuania, as in many other east-central

European countries in the fi rst half of the twentieth century, the heritage of rural

culture was still a living legacy. Timber cottages were still the norm in Lithuanian

villages, villagers used not only wooden furniture inherited from their forefathers, but

even some of their working tools, and rural craftsmen could still boast of their wood-

carving or weaving skills. The tangible and intangible pastoral heritage, such as craft

objects and verbal folklore, contributed to expressing ‘the Lithuanian character’ in

1 Compare, for example, Gebrauch und Missbrauch des Mittelalters, 19.–21. Jahrhundert. Uses and Abuses of

the Middle Ages: 19th–21st Century, ed. by János M. Bak, Jörg Jarnut et al., Mittelalter Studien, 17 (Munich,

2009).

160 GIEDRĖ JANKEVIČIŪTĖ

works of art, music, literature, architecture, and design. However, the nationality

preserved in this rural culture was related to individuals’ ability to preserve Lithuan-

ity while residing as a national minority in an empire ruled by foreigners, rather than

to the tradition of Lithuanian statehood. The idea of modern statehood was above

all connected to the history of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania — the era of

national statehood — as it was retrospectively viewed from the perspectives of the

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The image of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the collective memory of citizens

of the Lithuanian Republic in the 1920s was fi rst of all shaped by writers — the

polonophone novelists and Romantic poets of the nineteenth century and, from the

beginning of the twentieth century, Lithuanian neo-Romantics. Among the authors

writing in Lithuanian, Maironis’s poetry and Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius’s prose works,

especially his collection of short stories Dainavos šalies senų žmonių padavimai [Old

people’s myths from the land of Dainava] (1912), were particularly appreciated by

contemporaries. To citizens of this newly formed European state, the idealistic vision

of pre-Christian Lithuania presented in literary works evoked romantic dreams about

their ancestors who lived harmoniously on their land, while narratives of resistance

to Western assailants — German knights and solders — awakened pride in their

ancestors’ courage and devotion. The vision of pre-Christian Lithuania created and

disseminated by Maironis, Krėvė, and their adherents remained popular throughout

the twentieth century. It was interwoven into the myth of the nation’s ‘golden age’

and found its place in diverse genres of art.2 Such an image of pagan Lithuania, how-

ever, served as a prelude, as an attractive, imagination-awaking background for a

narrative on the traditions of Lithuanian statehood reaching back to and culminating

in the Middle Ages. In order to perceive ‘ducal Lithuania’ as the embodiment of ‘pure’

Lithuanian statehood, it was necessary to introduce its heroes — the medieval rulers

who pursued policies deemed benefi cial to Lithuania — to the Lithuanian nation. The

history of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fi fteenth centuries, that is, the so-called

period of the Grand (or ‘great’) Dukes, was associated with the tradition of unsullied

Lithuanian statehood and the greatest Lithuanian military and diplomatic victories.

In the view of many Lithuanians, the Union of Lublin in 1569 whereby the Grand

Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland were united into a federal state,

initiated (or, in other accounts, accelerated) the unfortunate expansion of Polish

culture into Lithuanian territories, which impeded the development of Lithuanian

national culture until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Lithuanian

nationalist movement began to burgeon. This dissociation from the common history

of Lithuano-Polish statehood was also encouraged by the political realities of the

1920s and 1930s. The Republic of Lithuania sought by diplomatic and ideological

means to retrieve the historic Lithuanian capital of Vilnius and its neighbouring

territories, which Poland had incorporated by force majeure in 1920/22.

2 One of the fi rst popular images of such ‘ancestral Lithuania’ was a curtain for the amateur theatre of the

Lithuanian cultural society Rūta painted in 1909 by the most famous Lithuanian artist of the twentieth century,

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (since 2003 it has been exhibited in the permanent collection of the M.K.

Čiurlionis Art Museum in Kaunas). It depicts a meadow on the shore of a bay of a lake, where under a mighty

oak-tree a venerable priest in white linen clothing and long silver hair fi res an altar.


This stage in the development and construction of the identity of citizens of the

young Lithuanian Republic was expressed and refl ected by different phenomena,

encompassing the offi cial policies towards place names and even personal names, as

well as by the images embodied in artistic works. More often than not, visual artists

present particularly pure and simplifi ed concepts of historical images. In other words,

monuments, paintings, posters, postal stamps, banknotes, and book illustrations

convey and, in their turn, shape the clichés through which history is perceived. This

peculiarity has been successfully used by ideologues engaged in shaping the collective

identity; on the other hand, this peculiarity makes visual art a useful source for

historians, and it has been increasingly recognized and valued as such.3 With this

in mind, we shall examine how the perception of the medieval Grand Duchy of

Lithuania that helped to shape the mentality of Lithuanian citizens during the

interwar period was expressed in Lithuanian visual arts of that time.

The creation of the visual image of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: The choice of a hero

The attention paid in independent Lithuania to the heritage of the medieval Grand

Duchy of Lithuania was so bright and strong-willed that it could be referred to as

‘a backward looking policy of memory’. This concept was supposed to form civil

consciousness and induce a feeling of national dignity. However, it took some time

to create the narrative and to choose its heroes.

About 1920, when the military struggles for independence were coming to an end,

the fi rst attempts were made to create various attributes necessary for the functioning

of the state, such as the national currency, postage stamps, government bonds, and

securities. The artists engaged in designing them were given the task of embodying

the state’s image, or rather, to take part in the process of developing the state’s

image.4 It was not an easy task, however, to embody this fairly amorphous vision of

an agricultural country with roots going back to the distant times of the Grand Duchy

of Lithuania, covered with romantic mists of the medieval past. In the fi rst exhibition

of Lithuanian artists held in 1920, landscapes prevailed, but a few portraits of

the most popular Grand Dukes — Gediminas (reigned 1316–41), Kęstutis (reigned

1377–82), and Vytautas the Great (reigned 1392–1430) — were also exhibited. The

imagined portraits of Gediminas and Vytautas can be found also on the postal stamps

released in 1920 to mark the convocation of the Constituent Parliament. The images

of Gediminas’s son and Vytautas’s father — Grand Duke Kęstutis — can be seen on

the fi rst standard issues of the postal stamps: the forty- and eighty-cent stamps, issued

3 A long bibliography could be provided, but let us confi ne ourselves to a few classics: Francis Haskell, History

and its Images: Art and Interpretation of the Past (New Haven, CT, 1993); Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing:

The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London, 2001, reprinted 2007); Emilio Gentile, Fascismo di pietra

(Rome and Bari, 2007). The latter shows the signifi cant role those images of the past play in establishing an

ideological doctrine of which nationalism is a very important component.4 A one-volume synthesis of Lithuanian history, Lietuvos istorija, ed. by Adolfas Šapoka, which provided an

offi cial historical narrative for the fi rst time, was published in Kaunas only in 1936.


in 1921.5 In 1923, when the 600th anniversary of the founding of Lithuania’s historic

capital Vilnius was celebrated (it was associated with the letters of Gediminas of

1323, the written source, in which Vilnius was fi rst mentioned), the artist Petras

Rimša made a commemorative medal with Gediminas on the obverse (Figure 1).

Despite its small format, this medal is often referred to as one of the fi rst monuments

of the Republic of Lithuania. As the young republic had not yet been able to build

huge monuments, Rimša’s medal performed a true function of a monument: it

was reproduced many times and described in different newspapers and magazines.

Moreover, the suggestiveness of its message was demonstrated by the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs, which ordered a few hundred copies of this medal as gifts to foreign

politicians and diplomats, in order politely to remind the world of Lithuania’s ambi-

tion to regain her historic capital. Rimša’s medal, dedicated to foundation of Vilnius,

was the fi rst piece of national historical art that evoked such wide attention.

Typically, the authors of the fi rst visual images of grand dukes, including Rimša

himself, painstakingly followed the iconography of the Polish visual art of the

Romantic tradition or else tried to resort to ‘the primary source’ — Sarmatiae

europeae descriptio by Alessandro Guagnini. This book, printed in Cracow in 1578

and often referred to as simply as Chronicae, contained portraits of Lithuanian dukes

created according to the canon of the time for the images of victorious and ancient

rulers.6 Both Guagnini’s ‘antiquity’ and the emotional persuasion characteristic of

Polish Romantic artists, were associated with historical reliability, and thus also with

‘truthfulness’.

5 The other six denominations of stamps of this issue depicted peasants doing agricultural work: two showed a

peasant sowing with a bast basket around his neck and four a reaper whetting his scythe.6 The classic example of this type was considered to be Paolo Giovio’s work Elogia Virorum bellica virtute

illustrium (Basle, 1575); see Haskell, History and its Images, pp. 44–51.

fi gure 1 Petras Rimša. Obverse of the Vilnius 600 Jubilee medal with the portrait of Grand Duke Gediminas. 1923. By courtesy of the M. K.

Čiurlionis National Art

Museum

http://maney-prod.literatumonline.com/action/showImage?doi=10.1179/174582110X12871342860207&iName=master.img-000.jpg&w=227&h=226


The spread of the custom to decorate venues for public political discussions,

lectures, concerts of Lithuanian music, or the congresses of various public organiza-

tions with the images of Lithuanian dukes, which fi rst emerged in 1920s, confi rms

how straightforward and even naïve could be the understanding of ‘contact with the

past’. For symbolic embodiment of different events, plaster busts à la Guagnini by the

sculptor Antanas Aleksandravičius, a re-emigrant from the United States of America,

were widely used in Lithuania during this decade.7 While in the long run Guagnini’s

prototype was found to be too symbolic and too anonymous, the combination of

‘truthfulness’ and ‘historicity’ ensured the exceptional popularity of historical works

of art in the neo-academic style, which provided a certain freedom of interpretation

for artists (the slightest deviation from public opinion endangered the popularity of

the work) and thus enabled the ‘refreshing’ of the appearance and characters of past

rulers and the restoration to collective memory of the brightest episodes in their

lives.

An alternative to such paraphrases of Guagnini was offered by painter Petras

Kalpokas, who in 1923 was hired to decorate a separate dining room, so-called Dukes’

Room in the restaurant of the Metropolis hotel in Kaunas. A fairly small space with

a neo-Gothic fi replace was decorated by the artist with the full-length portraits of

Grand Dukes Gediminas, Kęstutis, and Vytautas resembling theatre decorations.

In order that the standing or mounted fi gures of rulers in armour could make a

stronger impression on viewers, the author had chosen a suggestive angle from above.

This effect, reminiscent of the Baroque, ensured the viewers’ favour and also revealed

the possibilities in applying artistic means of expression, drawn from different styles

of the past, in creating the images of medieval rulers. Despite the ‘truthfulness’ of

their images, the Metropolis’s dukes were hardly recognizable without tabs, but the

latter did not bother contemporaries overmuch.8 Nevertheless, the selection of heroes

and the way in which they were represented, with examples of Mannerism, or

the pathos of Baroque or Romanticism, revealed that the country neither truly knew

the heroes of its past, nor had any clear idea of how to represent them. Of course,

artists simply followed historians. An artist could not create an attractive, easily

identifi able, and impressive image of the hero, unless he believed in his legend himself,

or had even experienced it. Lithuania needed legends, legends which could evoke

the nation’s pride in victories of her past, inspire her for future deeds, and be under-

standable and acceptable to everyone. Moreover, according to the historian Dangiras

7 One of the abundant examples of the use of dukes’ busts was the stage decoration of the congress of the

paramilitary organization Šauliai, which was highlighted in the press. According to various Lithuanian dailies,

the stage was decorated with a composition of plaster busts of Gediminas and Kęstutis and national fl ags (e.g.

Rytas, 7 February 1926). Most often, the organizers borrowed the busts or painted portraits from their creators

or from the Museum of War in Kaunas, where the collection of historical art was begun at the time of the

museum’s opening in 1921.8 Very characteristic in this respect, and seeming quite ridiculous today, was the story of the rearrangement of

the ‘Dukes’ Gallery’ in the Museum of War in Kaunas. After making a list of dukes, the images of whom could

preferably be exhibited in the museum, a special commission of museum representatives and historians passed

a resolution that to save money some existing portraits could be renamed after the required heroes. For

example, it was decided to change the little-known duke Liutavaras into the more famous Treniota, and, in

similar vein, Duke Rimgaudas was to be turned into Švarnas, etc. (Minutes of the Commission of the Museum

of War, dated 6 November 1934, the Archive of the Vytautas the Great Museum of War, 1934, case no. 16/4,

sheet 93).


Mačiulis, it was around 1928 that the contemporaries started to complain about the

lack of idealism and a fall-off in morality. As the routine of everyday life gradually

settled in, and recognition of the country’s internal and international problems sapped

the optimistic hopes of its fi rst few years, it became extremely important to fi nd

a common symbol, which could attract the society’s attention and organize it for

common action.9

In this context the suggestion in 1929 by a fi gure well known in Lithuanian culture,

Revd Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the death of

Vytautas the Great in 1930 (based on the analogy with Christian saints, whose dying

day is the daybreak of their eternal glory) was well received by infl uential fi gures in

political and cultural circles.10 Vytautas appealed not only as a great ruler. It was also

very important that his image was acceptable to people of different confessions, social

strata, and later even of different nationalities, for it was Vytautas who had invited

the Karaites and Tatars to settle in Lithuania and granted the Jews some privileges,

somewhat earlier than in most other European countries.11

The Lithuanian Government passed a law enacting the Jubilee Year of Vytautas

the Great on 31 December 1929, and soon the anniversary celebrations began. The

individuals behind the Jubilee had already made up their minds as to the kind of

Vytautas they intended to glorify. In creating the image of the great ruler, his

successes both on the battlefi eld and at the negotiating table were emphasized, as well

as his endeavours to join the mainstream of Christian Europe and thus strengthen the

power and authority of the ruler of Lithuania.

9 Dangiras Mačiulis, ‘Vytauto Didžiojo metų (1930) kampanijos prasmė’, Lituanistica, 46.2 (2001), 54–75

(p. 55).10 The fi rst attempt to bring an infl uential ruler of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania closer to contemporaries by

showing the relevance of his actual deeds to the present day and emphasizing possible analogies with historic

realities was related to ecclesiastical art. In 1921 Vaižgantas had initiated the renovation of the Gothic Church

of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Kaunas, which had been badly damaged by the Germans

during the war. He encouraged the artists to rely on examples from folk art in decorating the church. At the

same time, he wanted to draw on the history of the church, which, however, was not documented. According

to tradition, the church was founded by Vytautas the Great, who promised to build a church dedicated to

the Virgin after a battle lost against the Tatars in 1399, because, despite the defeat, he and his soldiers were

miraculously saved; they successfully swam across the Vorskla River. Therefore, despite the danger of annual

fl oods, the church was built on the bank of the River Nemunas (Niemen) for symbolic reasons. Thanks to

Vaižgantas, the church began to be referred to as the Vytautas Church. For the main altar Vaižgantas commis-

sioned a painting depicting the history of the church. Vytautas’s Gratitude to the Holy Virgin after the Battle

of the Vorskla was painted in 1921 by the landscapist Petras Kalpokas. His contemporaries asked the painter

to return from Italy and contribute to creation of the national art. He did not have much experience in paint-

ing large fi gurative compositions. Having received this order to create the painting for the altar, Kalpokas had

likely been looking for an example to follow and was inspired by Titian’s masterpiece from the Church of

Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. Unfortunately, the composition of the picture and the distorted

images of some of the characters evidently showed that the painter was a newcomer to the historical genre.

However, contemporaries were not concerned by the fl aws of the painting and welcomed this somewhat

amateurish work of art, which in their eyes managed to express the ‘true’ story. The painting by Kalpokas, or

rather the attention paid by Vaižgantas to Vytautas’s personality and his merits, served as a prelude in the

campaign to turn Vytautas the Great into the national hero.11 See Jurgita Šiaučiūnaitė-Verbickienė, ‘The Social and Legal Status of Jews in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

and its Infl uence on the Status of Tatars and Karaites’, Central Europe, 8.2 (2010), 68–85.


Resurrecting the spirit of Vytautas the Great

Works of visual art played an important role in the complex propaganda activities

of the Jubilee, even though initially they were limited to creating a universally

recognized portrait. It is hardly possible, and perhaps even pointless, to review all of

them in a single article. In this particular case the signifi cant examples are those which

had been recognized as standard images, that is to say that they were in compliance

with an image formed within the collective memory.

The proto-images were quite well known — a series of imagined portraits dating

from the fi fteenth and sixteenth centuries in the collection of the Radziwiłł (Radvila)

family at Nieswież (N'asvizh, Nesvyžius) and others from the Augustinian Church in

Brest.12 However, the task of creating a new image of Vytautas was far from simple.

The choice lay between the neo-academic tradition supported by the greater part

of society, or a more modern idiom, which, on one hand, could testify that the

Republic of Lithuania tracing the roots of its statehood back to the Middle Ages was

a dynamic and modern country, and, on the other, could encourage gifted young

artists to create pieces of art in the historical genre.

In 1929, even before the preparations for the Jubilee got into their stride, it

transpired that the distant medieval past could not yet be considered an integral part

of Lithuanian history in the perception of most contemporary Lithuanians. Therefore,

in order to turn this past into a component of national identity, people badly needed

an illusion of authenticity. The fi rst images of Vytautas the Great intended for wide

use — the posters advertising the anniversary campaign — were created by very

young artists, who created an image of the ruler that was far too modern for contem-

porary taste (Figure 2). Not all of them paid attention to the canonical representation

of Vytautas — an armoured knight with a grand ducal mitre and a mantle hemmed

with ermine. Among all the modern-style images of Vytautas, only the composition

Vytautas’s Oath by Petras Tarabilda, a young student of graphic art at the Kaunas

Art School, was received favourably by the public (Figure 3). This image represented

an event that was easily understandable to everybody and invoked noble feelings,

even though it was never confi rmed by historical annals — the oath by the future

hero of the battle of Grunwald (Žalgiris, Tannenberg, 1410) to take revenge on the

Teutonic Knights for the burned castle of Kaunas. This work of art was the only one

out of the ‘modernistic’ images of Vytautas to be widely reproduced in military and

youth magazines; other works by young artists remained footnotes in the history of

Lithuanian art.

The need for such a ‘truthful’ vision was also confi rmed by popularity of the pic-

ture The Battle of Grunwald by the Polish academic painter, Jan Matejko.13 Despite

strong anti-Polish sentiments in interwar Lithuania, reproductions of this picture

were disseminated in enormous numbers of copies. Moreover, when a street in

Kaunas was named after Matejko in 1929, not a single dissenting voice could be

heard. Thus the merits of this Polish painter in the formation of historical mentality

of citizens of the Lithuanian Republic were offi cially recognized and appreciated.14

12 See Giedrė Mickūnaitė, Making a Great Ruler. Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania (Budapest, 2006).13 The original, painted in 1878 (426 × 987 cm), is kept in the National Museum in Warsaw; this picture was (and

in some circles still remains) exceptionally popular in both Poland and Lithuania.14 Alvydas Nikžentaitis, ‘Laikinosios ir Lietuvos Respublikos sostinių kultūrinės atmintys: lyginamosios analizės

bandymas’, Acta humanitarica universitatis Saulensis, 9 (2009), 235–46 (p. 237).


In the same context, a lithograph, based on the late seventeenth-century proto-

image (regarded as normative) found in the Augustinian Church in Brest was created

for the Jubilee year on the basis of a picture by one of the classic exponents of

national art, Adomas Varnas (Figure 4). It was greatly appreciated by the public at

large. The lithograph, which looked very similar to a photographic portrait, was

preferred not only to more ‘creative’ modernistic works, but even to the paintings

depicting Vytautas, painted by Varnas himself around 1920.15 After grasping contem-

poraries’ taste, this artist also benefi ted from the business opportunities provided by

the Jubilee. He made an arrangement with the Vytautas the Great Jubilee Committee

for its permission to use the ruler’s image in decorating chinaware — dishes, mugs,

coffee and tea services. Commemorative chinaware was bought not only by private

individuals, but also ordered and used by the main hotel in Kaunas — the Lietuva

(Lithuania), the café of the Military Academy, and the Kaunas Offi cers’ Club. Not

all contemporaries were delighted; some expressed the opinion that such commer-

cialization of the ruler’s image offended his memory and his admirers’ feelings.16

fi gure 2 Stasys Ušinskas. The poster advertising the Vytautas the Great anniver-sary campaign. 1929. By courtesy of the M. K. Čiurlionis National

Art Museum

fi gure 3 Petras Tarabilda. Vytautas’s Oath. 1931. By courtesy of the Tarabilda Family

15 During this period, Varnas was interested in Pointilism and Fauvism, refused the geometric perspective, tonic

patterning, used bright local colours and decorative generalization of natural forms.16 Varnas’s critics failed to notice that he used the profi ts for a publicly signifi cant purpose — he fi nanced

a kindergarten founded by his wife Marija Varnienė, where the Maria Montessori educational practice,

considered progressive for the time, was applied.




However, the symbolic value of this souvenir designed for the masses was revealed

by later political realities: after Lithuania lost her independence in 1940, these prod-

ucts decorated with the image of Vytautas the Great became valued — and valuable

— relics of the country’s lost independence. Both Lithuanian citizens dreaming of

national liberation and occupants persecuting the idea of freedom associated these

products with other images that reminded their beholders of the values of independ-

ent Lithuania, which traced back her statehood to the medieval Grand Duchy of

Lithuania.

Thus, the images of Vytautas created by the Pole Jan Matejko and the Lithuanian

Adomas Varnas had become objects of mass culture in the fullest sense of the expres-

sion.17 Even the Vytautas the Great Anniversary Medal created by Petras Rimša — an

internationally recognized creator of medals, and another classic national artist in

Lithuania — could not compete with the popularity of the painted images. On the

other hand, the value of Rimša’s medal was determined fi rst of all by the signifi cance

given to it by its use in the ritual celebrations of the Jubilee, rather than its artistic

advantages.

The Vytautas the Great Jubilee Committee released four variations of Rimša’s

medal: wall medallions, smaller reliefs set in stone or a wooden frame, intended as

decorations for writing desks, and two-sided medals available in two sizes. No less

than 14,000 of the small medals (25 mm in diameter) were sold, at the modest price

of one litas each. The images of Vytautas created by Rimša — the obverse and reverse

of the medal fi xed to a wooden or stone base — appeared on the desks of many state

offi cials (Figure 5). Bronze-cast models of the medal (with obverse and reverse as a

separate pair of bas-reliefs) were built into the walls of some buildings erected for the

Jubilee, such as Kaunas Central Post Offi ce and Kaunas Central Fire Station, as well

as in Lithuanian churches founded by Vytautas — fi rst of all in the wall of the afore-

mentioned Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, widely known as

the Vytautas Church (see note 10 above). It should be noted that during the Soviet

occupation, as well as in the fi rst years after the restoration of independence (the

early 1990s), even the poorest copies of Rimša’s medal, hardly resembling the original

one, were highly popular. And again, as in the case of Varnas’s chinaware, what

seemed really precious was not so much the artistic quality of the work, but the

ideal symbolized by it — the search for political freedom, expressed by the image of

Vytautas representing the tradition of Lithuanian statehood.

The large-scale model of the obverse of Rimša’s medal — the bas-relief portraying

the Grand Duke — during the Vytautas the Great anniversary campaign served

as the symbolic image of the ruler. It represented a journey around independent

Lithuania by the ruler himself, called back from the distant past. The bronze cast of

the model was set in a wooden frame with a long staff and thus became a kind

of processional painting or even a portable retable. It was carried throughout the

17 Vytautas the Great’s symbolic participation in the everyday life of Lithuanian citizens was assured not only by

reproductions of Matejko’s painting and Varnas’s lithographic portraits and china sets, which circulated in

large numbers, but also by playing cards with images of the grand dukes. In the deck of cards published by

‘Spindulys’ in 1930 (designed by Barbora Didžiokienė), Vytautas was depicted as the king of clubs, his mother,

the Duchess Birutė, as the queen of clubs, and his grandfather Gediminas as the ace of hearts. See Lijana

Šatavičiūtė, ‘Tautinio stiliaus keistenybės tarpukario Lietuvoje’, Menotyra, 32.3 (2003), 35–43.


country by foot, boat, plane, and car, greeted solemnly, kept overnight, and then seen

off again.18 The journey began in Kaunas on 15 July (the anniversary of the battle of

Grunwald) and lasted until 8 September, the anniversary of the day of Vytautas’s

intended coronation.19 From 1930 onwards, 8 September, the date celebrated by

18 See Giedrius Viliūnas, ‘Vytauto Didžiojo kultas tarpukario Lietuvoje’, Lietuvių atgimimo istorijos studijos, 17

(2001), 68–102; Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, Dailė ir valstybė: dailės gyvenimas Lietuvos Respublikoje 1918–1940

(Kaunas, 2003), pp. 39–42.19 The relief returned to Kaunas on 7 September 1930. It was solemnly greeted and honoured at the celebrations

of 8 September, and then mysteriously disappeared (and has never since been found).

fi gure 5 The image of Vytautas created by Petras Rimša: the obverse of the commemo-rative medal fi xed to a stone base, 1930. By courtesy of the M. K. Čiurlionis National

Art Museum

fi gure 4 Certifi cate of Appreciation for the donation to the Vytautas the Great Museum building fund of the Vytautas the Great Jubilee Committee with a lithograph portrait of the ruler by Adomas Varnas. 1930. By courtesy of the M. K. Čiurlionis National

Art Museum




Catholics as the Feast of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, became a public

holiday, the Day of the Nation. This day was commemorated as an unfulfi lled

possibility to reinforce Lithuanian statehood, which left an unaccomplished task

for future generations and therefore was considered a particularly good occasion to

refl ect on the past and future of the national state.

Attempts to express visually the memory of Vytautas the Great continued after

1930. The Order of Vytautas the Great, established in 1930 as the highest award of

the state, also encouraged conciousness of the signifi cance of Vytautas’s historical

role. So too did a silver coin with a denomination of 10 litai, issued in 1936. Designed

by well-known sculptor Juozas Zikaras, it depicted the profi le of the ruler on the

obverse face.20 Not a single city or town was left in Lithuania without a monument

to Vytautas the Great. The majority of such monuments were abstract forms —

stelae, obelisks, pyramids with inscriptions stating their relationship with the

Vytautas the Great Jubilee Year and Lithuanian statehood. After the Second World

War, nearly all such monuments were destroyed by the Soviet government, only to

be rebuilt by the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s.21 At this time the demolition

of Soviet monuments and restoration of interwar monuments became an integral part

of the struggle for national independence. In seeking to restore the monuments

destroyed by the Soviet occupiers, the actors in this ‘war of symbols’ often showed

no interest in their artistic value; nor were they concerned by the sometimes played-

out implications of such restored monuments. Such incongruities were highlighted by

the changed understanding of national history that, in its turn, also changed attitudes

towards the heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.22 This ‘monument campaign’

at the end of the twentieth century encourages deeper insight not only into the

memory attached to monuments to Vytautas built by interwar Lithuanian society (the

tradition of national statehood reaching back to the Middle Ages), but also how such

monuments were understood by their rebuilders — citizens of Lithuania after the

restoration of national independence.

Representations of Vytautas the Great: Are they actually the embodied images of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania?

On 15 July 1990, on the anniversary of the battle of Grunwald, a monument to

Vytautas the Great was unveiled in the centre of Kaunas. Only the enthusiasm caused

by the newly regained independence can explain the restoration of such a monument,

which embodies the best allegorical traditions of the imperial era, and which from

a contemporary point of view is ‘politically incorrect’.23 Nevertheless, even today

20 The fi ve litai banknote issued for the Vytautas the Great Jubilee in 1929 was even less fi t for propaganda

purposes. A mass user considers metal coins to be of more value and more lasting than paper money. It is

noteworthy that the Grand Duke’s image on the obverse of this banknote was small and the scene of the

Battle of Grunwald was as indistinct on the reverse.21 Nukentėję paminklai, ed. by Marija Skirmantienė and Jonas Varnauskas (Vilnius, 1994).22 Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, ‘Apie paminklus tautinio atgimimo laikotarpiais. Lietuva 1918–1940 ir 1998–1993’,

Menotyra, 24.2 (1995), 56–64.23 See Daiva Citvarienė, ‘Ideologiniai viešojo diskurso konstruktai ir atminties politika posovietinėje Lietuvoje’,

Darbai ir dienos, 49 (2008), 179–85.


viewers eagerly argue about the four bended fi gures holding the base of Vytautas

and whom they represent — according to the initial concept, they are a Russian, a

Pole, a Tatar, and a Teutonic knight. The reconstruction of this monument is an

exceptional case, as the original monument by the sculptor Vincas Grybas, erected in

the grounds of the Military Academy in 1932 and destroyed by the Soviets after the

Second World War, was standing in the distant outskirts of Kaunas. The decision to

move the replica of the destroyed monument to one of the central streets of Kaunas,

in front of the Musical Theatre, was made in 1989 (the Soviet Army was still present

in its original location — the barracks of the Military Academy). This decision, as

well as the enthusiasm with which it was made and greeted, can easily be understood

and explained by the political circumstances of the time.

In this case, however, when considering the changing relationship with history,

including the heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, it is noteworthy that some

of Kaunas’s intellectuals and artists tried to question the meaning of this symbolic

campaign. The opponents of this campaign argued that the shape and symbolism of

Grybas’s monument looked like an anachronism in the present-day context, at the

end of the twentieth century. In their view that the Soviet occupation had produced

new heroes of struggles for national independence who deserved immortalization —

fi rst and foremost Romas Kalanta, who burned himself in public near the Musical

Theatre in 1972 in a protest against the Soviet regime. But none of these arguments

had any impact on the decision to reinstate the old symbol.24

The case of the Vytautas the Great monument in Kaunas has clearly shown that

our contemporaries understand the pieces of the interwar Lithuanian architecture and

art embodying the past of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a generalized symbol

of independent statehood related both to the Middle Ages and the fi rst half of the

twentieth century, regardless of the events and personalities they depict. Further

examples testify to similar links between the present and the interwar historical art

heritage.

For almost two decades, the key accents in the décor of the Presidential Palace in

Vilnius were pictures by artist Jonas Mackevičius, painted in the academic manner in

the 1930s. They depict the most signifi cant moments of Vytautas’s diplomatic and

military career.25 The large-scale compositions Vytautas the Great at the Black Sea

(Figure 6), The Congress of Lutsk, and Vytautas the Great at Naugardas

(Navahrudak, Nowogródek) (also known by the title The Inhabitants of Naugardas

Pay a Ransom to Vytautas) testify to the continuity of the tradition of statehood:

medieval Lithuania — the interwar Lithuanian Republic — the present Lithuanian

Republic. In 2010, however, the pictures by Mackevičius were returned to their

original place — the great hall of Vytautas Magnus Museum of War in Kaunas, the

24 A more up-to-date monument to Romas Kalanta (by the sculptor Robertas Antinis, Jr, and the architect Saulius

Juškys) was unveiled in the square in front of Kaunas Musical Theatre on 14 May 2002 in commemoration of

the thirtieth anniversary of his death.25 The paintings, which had been rolled up and set aside during the fi rst years of the Soviet occupation, were

restored at the beginning of the 1990s and exhibited in the public space of the President’s Palace in Vilnius.


so-called Vytautas Chapel.26 This decision could be considered as part of the restora-

tion of this interwar monument (the Vytautas the Great Museum, opened in 1936,

was the most important monument or building erected in commemoration of the

Vytautas the Great Jubilee year), and therefore of the wider interwar heritage (Figure

7). But it could also be considered as a remarkable sign of Lithuanian society’s

changed mentality. At the beginning of 2010 the Presidential Palace (whose incumbent

was by now Dalia Grybauskaitė) began to be decorated with works of contemporary

artists, revealing a more up-to-date approach to the country’s history.

fi gure 6 The painting Vytautas the Great at the Black Sea by Vytautas Mackevičius at the permanent exhibition of Vytautas the Great War Museum in 1930 during the celebration of the jubilee year. By courtesy of the Vytautas the Great War Museum

26 This representational space was established as a part of the permanent collection in the newly built museum,

which was opened in 1936. The richly decorated Vytautas Chapel was placed in the centre of the display that

showed the struggles for independence in the twentieth century, unequivocally reminding its viewers that the

victories of the present fed on the power emerging from the distant past. The museum itself was built as a

monument to Vytautas: the Vytautas the Great Museum of War was situated on one side of the building, and

the Vytautas the Great Museum of Culture (today known as the National Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

Art Museum) — on the other. The Vytautas Chapel, however, was designed as an additional symbolic space,

richly decorated with art works, including the above-mentioned works by Mackevičius, a canvas by the Polish

second-rank neo-academic painter Jan Styka, depicting Vytautas’s Oath in 1362 to Take Revenge on the

Teutonic Knights for the Destruction of Kaunas Castle (such an oath had never been mentioned in any written

annals), bought in 1937 for the museum collection from the painter’s heirs in Paris, and a large format copy of

The Battle of Grunwald by Matejko. In the apse of the Chapel, a plaster replica by Vincas Grybas of the

monument to Vytautas was installed.



With regard to the contemporary refl ection of the heritage of the Grand Duchy of

Lithuania and its embodiment in interwar Lithuania, another analogy between the

present and the 1930s could be noticed: today, in the same manner as eighty years

ago, regardless of the efforts to broaden the vision of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

and exalt new heroes, undertaken by politicians, historians, philosophers, and

journalists, Vytautas the Great remains the most distinguished symbolic fi gure. It is

noteworthy that in 2010, during commemorations of the 600th anniversary of the

Battle of Grunwald, a new initiative was started for the construction of a monument

to Vytautas in Vilnius. This follows on from the erection in Vilnius of a monument

and monumental bridge in honour of the thirteenth-century Lithuanian king,

Mindaugas, in 2003, the inauguration of a building imitating the Lower Castle in

Vilnius in 2009, and, in the town of Raižiai in the same year, the unveiling of a

monument to Vytautas on the initiative of the local Tatar community.27

Therefore, the hierarchy of the rulers of medieval Lithuania with Vytautas the

Great at the forefront seems to be unchanging; essentially it remains the same as

the form it had taken by the end of the 1930s. It is likely that such an approach

to Lithuania’s national heroes would have not altered after Lithuania repossessed

Vilnius from Poland in October 1939, as a Jubilee campaign for the six hundredth

fi gure 7 The ‘Vytautas Chapel’ — the central point of the Vytautas the Great War Museum. After 1936. By courtesy of the Vytautas the Great War Museum

27 On the Lower Castle, see Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, ‘Imagining the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: The Politics and

Economics of the Reconstruction of Trakai Castle and the “Palace of Sovereigns” in Vilnius’, Central Europe,

8.2 (2010), 181–203.



anniversary of Gediminas’s death in 1941 was planned. In the collective memory

Gediminas was always related to Vilnius. His image would probably not have

been changed: he would have remained the ruler who brought glory to Vilnius, who

sought to reinforce and enrich this city. But his image could never be equal to that

of Vytautas, the ruler of Lithuania at its greatest, or, to be more precise, the ruler of

a Lithuanian empire.

Vytautas’s unrivalled position in the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is

supported by a few examples of representational art created at the very end of the

1930s. One of them was the interior decor of the newly built Kaunas Offi cer’s Club.

Its creators sought to relate three elements present in the identity of the citizens

of independent Lithuania: the idea of a modern state, folk art heritage representing

ethno-linguistic nationalism, and medieval Lithuania. The gable of this neo-classical

building fi nished in 1938 was decorated with a sculptural composition Three Giants

(by Bronius Pundzius) generally symbolizing the military power of ducal Lithuania

(the meaning of this giant symbol was also confi rmed by the name of the Club’s

restaurant — Three Giants). On the piano nobile of the building two splendid halls

were fi tted out — a presidential suite and the ‘Vytautas hall’, imitating the imagined

interior of a Lithuanian medieval castle. The antechamber leading to the main halls,

decorated by full-length portraits of medieval grand dukes, was intended to evoke

the traditional portrait galleries of forefathers, supposedly a prerequisite of ancient

castles, but it also stated clearly that the most important fi gure in the gallery was

Vytautas the Great, to whom a separate hall was dedicated, for meetings of the high-

est ranking members of the club. The presidential suite was decorated with elements

inspired by folk art, while in the hall of the president’s ‘predecessor’ — Vytautas the

Great — architectural symbolism was expressed by mural paintings, which echoed

the subjects and compositions of Mackevičius’s Vytautas triptych kept in the Museum

of War. These were complemented by a winter hunting scene, which suited a room

with wood panels and a fi replace.

This reference to the supposed life of Vytautas’s court revealed a need to visualize

the details of the grand ducal era and everyday life, even with episodes from per-

sonal biographies. Such a need had increased greatly by the later 1930s. Any lack of

source-based historical knowledge was usually compensated by ‘typical’ daily life

scenes of the distant epoch, with a special focus on hunting and pagan religious

ceremonies.28 One plot of special interest was the marriage story of Vytautas’s

parents — the priestess Birutė and Grand Duke Kęstutis. As tradition has it, Kęstutis

28 Ancient armour, clubs, helmets decorated with aurochs’ horns and, as a contrast to such attributes of power,

girls’ golden braids, white linen clothing, and greyhaired sages of the past stirred contemporaries’ imaginations.

Such images or stories never wanted for customers. A good example is the panel Hunting Aurochs painted by

Petras Kalpokas in the offi ce building Pažanga (Progress) situated in the representational Laisves Avenue, in the

centre of Kaunas. The painter Kazys Šimonis painted a panel with an idyllic landscape settled by ancient

Lithuanians for a rest-house in the spa and resort of Birštonas. The popularity of such a pre-Christian Eden

myth could be also confi rmed by the décor of the Raseiniai gymnasium (high school). This Gymnasium was

named after the national poet Maironis, so the artist Adomas Varnas, who decorated its representational

premises according to motives of Maironis’s poetry, among other things also pictured a pre-Christian vision

of moral agriculturalists and warriors, as glorifi ed by the poet. Even artists of the younger generation were

ready to create such visions, applying well-learned lessons of French neo-classicism (this may be confi rmed, for

example, by Juozas Mikėnas’s sketches for wall paintings).


fell in love with Birutė after meeting her while hunting in the woods of Palanga,

on the shores of the Baltic Sea. The Grand Duke broke the taboo, kidnapped his

beloved priestess and took her to Senieji Trakai, where Vytautas was born. Needless

to say, Palanga was an extremely popular summer resort in interwar Lithuania. The

entire elite of the country, including President Antanas Smetona, would come here on

vacation. Had war not broken out, a new multi-fi gure monument according to a

design by Vincas Grybas would probably have embodied the legend of Birutė. At the

initiative of the Birutė society (gathering ladies of offi cers’ families), a fundraising

campaign was announced in 1938.29

Thus, despite interwar contemporaries’ growing interest in less representational

and political, but more aesthetic visions of Lithuanian past (Figures 8, 9), the image

of Vytautas retained its dominant position. It could not be overshadowed even by the

intensifying desire to cast Lithuania as a modern state and thus to search for and

express her modern identity. The latter ideas were especially supported by critics

of the last large commission for representational art in independent Lithuania — the

Lithuanian pavilion at the New York World Fair of 1939.

Lithuania’s contribution was placed in a typical modernist pavilion built according

to a standard design project by the organizers of the exhibition. From the outside it

did not distinguish itself from the neighbouring pavilions. The national particularities

were signalled only by the national coat of arms with the Vytis (Chaser) on the facade

and the national fl ag. Even the sculptural allegory of Lithuania erected in front of

the building was similar to the sculptures standing nearby and representing other

countries. Instead of displaying achievements in the fi elds of industry, agriculture, or

culture, the main hall of the pavilion introduced the history of Lithuanian state-

hood.30 It was embodied by the statue of Vytautas the Great (by Vytautas Kašuba)

and seven large paintings. Four of the paintings conveyed episodes from the history

of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania: The Coronation of Mindaugas, Grand

Duke Algirdas at the Gates of Moscow, The Teutonic Knights Laying their Banners

at Vytautas’s Feet after their Defeat in the Battle of Grunwald, and Emperor Sigis-

mund Offering the Crown to Vytautas at the Congress of Lutsk (Figure 10). This

proportion depicts the place of the medieval Grand Duchy in general and of Vytautas

in particular in the collective memory of the citizens of the Republic of Lithuania.

However, such a distinctly retrospective dimension in the decoration of the pavilion

angered some younger intellectuals and some Lithuanians residing in the United

States of America. They were displeased by Lithuania’s presentation of herself as an

old-fashioned, tired, and conservative state situated somewhere on the boundaries of

Europe and by the lost chance to demonstrate Lithuania’s growing potential to the

world. Such disappointed critics of the Lithuanian image were not interested in the

fact that the Polish pavilion was decorated in a very similar manner — there were

panels representing Bolesław the Valiant greeting Otto III on the occasion of the

latter’s pilgrimage to Gniezno in 1000 to honour the relics of St Adalbert, the Baptism

29 ‘Kunigaikštienei Birutei Palangoje rengiamasi pastatyti didžiulį paminklą’, Lietuvos žinios, 4 February 1938.30 See Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, ‘Lithuania at the International Exhibitions of the 1920s and 1930s’, in Neue Staaten

— neue Bilder?, ed. by Arnold Bartetzky, Marina Dmitrieva, and Stefan Troebst (Vienna, 2005), pp. 55–60.


of Lithuania (1387), the Union of Lublin (1569), the Confederacy of Warsaw (1573),

the Siege of Vienna (1683), and the Constitution of 3 May 1791.31

It is likely that the polemics regarding the Lithuania’s presentation in New York

would have initiated a wider discussion about the perception of the heritage of the

Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Republic of Lithuania, had the country enjoyed

a longer period of independence. The tense internal and international situation had

also shifted attention towards more careful examination of and refl ection on the

challenges of more recent times. The experience of the fi rst Soviet occupation in

1940–41 soon stifl ed any discussions or disputes of this sort.

fi gure 8 The Painting The Archer (1930s) by Kazys Šimonis — one of most popular painters of interwar Lithuania, considered as expressing true Lithuanianity.Private collection

31 Katalog ofi cjalny działu polskiego na międzynarodowej wystawie w Nowym Jorku 1939 (Warsaw, 1939).



The causes of the survival of the modern canon of the representa-tion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the Second World War

The image of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as it was constructed during

the period between the two world wars, was certainly incomplete and limited, but it

expressed the main idea — that of political freedom. It remained relevant during

the Nazi occupation (1941–44). The German authorities banned the public use

not only of the image of Vytautas the Great, who had defeated German knights, but

also of those who, like Grand Duke Algirdas (1345–77), had conquered Slavs. It is

fi gure 9 The good old days in Lithuania: project for wall painting by Juozas Mikėnas. 1930s. By courtesy of the Lithuanian Art Museum

fi gure 10 Fragment of the Central Hall of the Lithuanian Pavilion in the 1939 New York World Fair.




interesting to note, however, that the image of Vytautas, as the one who fought

against the Teutonic Knights, that is, Germans — the eternal enemies of the Slavs

and their friends the Lithuanians — was revived during the Second World War deep

in the Soviet Union, to the rear of the fi ghting, where a community of pro-Soviet

Lithuanians was established. Why did Soviet ideologues concentrate on the battles of

Lithuanians against the Teutonic Order? During the fi rst Soviet occupation they had

tried to consign the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to oblivion as soon as

possible. For example, one of the fi rst orders issued by the Lithuanian puppet govern-

ment in 1940 was to change the name of the Vytautas the Great Museum of Culture

into the ‘Kaunas State Culture Museum’, and that of the Vytautas the Great Museum

of War into the ‘Museum of Revolutionary Struggles’.32

However, when the Soviet Russians started fi ghting the Germans they became

eager to revive and raise the names of historic warriors who had resisted German

invaders, and majestic portraits of these fi ghters were created to inspire contemporar-

ies.33 Rimvydas Petrauskas and Darius Staliūnas, Lithuanian historians who have

researched changes in the perception of the battle of Grunwald in collective memory,

point out that the perspective on Grunwald established in Soviet historiography was

‘translated’ into Lithuanian with the help of books by the pro-Soviet Lithuanian

historians Juozas Žiugžda and Kazys Sideravičius. The books, which were written

and published in Moscow in 1942 and 1944 respectively, pictured the Germans as the

‘eternal enemies of the Lithuanian nation’. According to Petrauskas and Staliūnas, the

idea of victory by the ‘united Slav and Baltic nations’ was, among other things, meant

to replace the earlier cult of Vytautas, which was too closely related to the idea of

independence and recalled the Christian, and thus Western, past of Lithuania.34 It is

symbolic that during the war the name of Grunwald was given to a Soviet guerrilla

platoon that was engaged in battles against Nazi Germans in the territories of Belarus

and Lithuania.

The idea of ‘Lithuania of the Grunwald epoch’ fi ghting against Nazi Germany

was persuasively conveyed by the graphic artist who made the cover for the book

‘Lithuania in the times of Grunwald’. This book was published in Moscow, 1942, by

the Lithuanian poet Liudas Gira, who collaborated with the Soviet government. At

the bottom of the cover the illustrator depicted armoured Teutonic knights running

away from the Lithuanian cavalry while at the top there was a Soviet tank crushing

Wehrmacht infantry and an unfurled red fl ag bearing the hammer and sickle

(Figure 11). Thus the historians, writers, and painters of the ‘rear front’ were working

together encouraging their fellow countrymen to contribute to the Soviet fi ght against

the Germans — the ‘eternal’ common foe of Slavs and Lithuanians.

In German-occupied Lithuania the image of Vytautas the Great, as the symbolic

fi gure of independent Lithuania, was only used in ecclesiastical art. A medallion with

32 Pakeistas V. D. Muziejaus vardas’, Tiesa, 27 August 1940.33 For example, in 1942 the Russian painter Pavel Korin created the highly publicized triptych ‘Aleksandr Nevskii’.

It was shown in Moscow in 1943 at the exhibition ‘Heroic Front and Rear Front’ and glorifi ed the ruler who

protected the Western border of ‘Russia’ (Rus') from the Livonian Order in the thirteenth century.34 Rimvydas Petrauskas and Darius Staliūnas, ‘Die drei Namen der Schlacht: Erinnerungsketten um Tannenberg/

Grunwald/Žalgiris’, in Verfl ochtene Erinnerungen. Polen und seine Nachbarn im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed.

by Martin von Aust, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, and Stefan Troebst (Vienna a. o., 2009), pp. 119–36.


the portrait of the grand duke in the crown of laurels and national fl ags was used

for the decoration of the church in a small town of Perloja, not far from Vilnius.

The aesthetic concept of the church was conceived by the local community, guided

by its priest. The church was decorated by a group of artists, led by Jerzy Hoppen,

fi gure 11 The cover of the poem by Liudas Gira ‘Lithuania in the times of Grunwald’, published in Moscow in 1942.



a well-known graphic artist and heritage specialist of Polish origin from Vilnius.35

The symbols of Lithuanian statehood, such as the Vytis (Chaser), the cross of the

Jagiellons, and the Pillars of Gediminas, were woven into a religious work of art.

The apogee of the patriotic theme, however, was a medallion with the image of

Vytautas the Great, which was placed in the centre of the organ choir’s parapet.

The frame of the medallion was made of a wreath of laurel, with three national fl ags

on both sides. At the bottom of the portrait one fi nds a verse from the Lithuanian

anthem: ‘Lithuania, our homeland, Land of heroes!’ Next to the portrait, the words

by an unknown author are inscribed: ‘Lithuania is in God’s providence, under His

protection, and He will never abandon this country, which has been put to trial

throughout the centuries. It is He who makes the giants of the spirit for the future,

leading them in miraculous ways’. Those lines unequivocally convey the intentions

of those who commissioned this decor — openly to express the hope of freedom

by using historical images. This piece of art did not draw much attention during the

war, because at that time it was not easy to spread information about it. However,

another event, the reconstruction of the dome of the St Casimir’s Church in Vilnius,

fi nished in 1943, drew widespread comment.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, by order of the tsarist government,

St Casimir’s Church was turned into an Orthodox church and an onion-dome had

been added to it. In 1943 this was replaced by a form that looked like the grand

ducal mitre — an allusion to the patron saint of Lithuania, Prince Casimir Jagiellon

(1458–84), and also to the times when Lithuania enjoyed both power and glory. The

symbolic signifi cance of this architectural detail was understood and very favourably

received by both Poles and Lithuanians in the city.

During the German occupation, images of the grand dukes, which were forbidden

by the Nazi censorship, were replaced wherever possible by the portraits of St Casimir,

the patron of Lithuania, in order to keep the memories of the medieval Grand Duchy

of Lithuania alive in the collective memory.36 However, this subject invites a separate

discussion.

Concluding remarks

The reception of the cultural image of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as it was

represented in art and architecture of the period between the two world wars, aimed

to stir patriotic pride. The customers and creators of such works of art attempted to

embody the most glorious moments in the history of the medieval Lithuanian state.

Consequently, Vytautas the Great became the most popular hero, while the most

popular narrative was the stories of his deeds, some of them falling within the realms

of legend. By the end of the 1930s, some criticism could be heard of this romanticized

and constricted model of collective memory, but the loss of political freedom soon

silenced such voices. The main concern of Lithuanian patriots in occupied Lithuania

was not to review this image, but rather to safeguard the idea of statehood and those

35 See Dalia Vasiliūnienė, ‘Sienų tapyba Perlojos bažnyčioje’, Menotyra, 36.3 (2004), 41–49.36 See Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, ‘Šv. Kazimiero atvaizdas XX a. Lietuvos dailėje ir 1943 m. konkursas’, in Šventasis

Kazimieras istorijos vyksme. Įvaizdis ir refl eksija, ed. by Paulius Subačius (Vilnius, 2006), pp. 75–84.


of its traces that had not yet been destroyed by the Soviets. The image of the Grand

Duchy of Lithuania, which was conceived during the interwar period, was further

nurtured by the Lithuanian emigrés in the United States of America, who enriched it

with some additional national elements. The most widespread perception of the

Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the turn of the twentieth century was the one inherited

from the interwar period. It has led to some particularly controversial actions. The

(re)construction of the so-called Palace of Sovereigns in Vilnius still provokes public

disputes (the ruins of the original palace were dismantled at the turn of the eighteenth

century). Such arguments show that there is more than one point of view regarding

the conservation and present-day value of heritage in general; more specifi cally, there

is more than one way to make the heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania relevant

to our contemporaries.

Notes on contributor

Dr Giedrė Jankevičiūtė (b. 1960) is a leading researcher at the Lithuanian Institute

for Culture Research in Vilnius, Lithuania, and associated professor of Vilnius

Art Academy. The main fi eld of her interest is art and artistic life in the second half

of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. She has published Dailė ir valstybė: dailės gyvenimas Lietuvos Respublikoje 1918–1940 [Art and State: Artistic Life in the

Lithuanian Republic, 1918–1940] (Kaunas, 2003), and an illustrated book in both

Lithuanian and English, The Graphic Arts in Lithuania 1918–1940 (Vilnius, 2008).

She has also edited several paper collections of papers and exhibition catalogues on

twentieth-century Lithuanian art, while articles, based on her research, have appeared

in American, Czech, Estonian, German, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Polish academic

reviews and journals. Recently she started a new project on artistic life in Lithuania

during the Second World War.

Correspondence to: Dr Giedrė Jankevičiūtė, Department of Art History, Lithua-

nian Institute for Culture Research (Lietuvos kultūros tyrimų institutas), Saltoniškių

Street 58, LT-008105 Vilnius, Lithuania. Email: [email protected]

constructing national identity: the image of the medieval grand duchy of lithuania in lithuanian art...

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