Reconstituting the Fatherland in Early Modern Livonia Reconstituting the Fatherland in Early Modern Livonia
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RECONSTITUTING THE FATHERLAND IN EARLY MODERN LIVONIA RECONSTITUTING THE FATHERLAND IN EARLY MODERN LIVONIA Biruta Melliņa-Flood [email protected] Word countbl.com Key words: early modern Livonia, medievalism, nostalgia, Heimatkunde, cultural intertextuality This article is a short extract from the Prelude to the main body of my PhD dissertation in progress. The topic of the dissertation is: “Riga as a Work of Art with Emphasis on the Implications of Medievalism: 1857–1910”. It is a phenomenological study based on visual primary evidence. To interpret the implications of medievalism in Riga, it is necessary to focus on medieval reception in the Russian Province of Livonia in the previous century, which the nineteenth century looked back to when building a modern city out of the old. This paper identifies the medievalist impulse at a crucial time in its history as part of the reconstitution of the lost fatherland. It suggests nostalgia as the underlying psychological precondition of medieval- ism and links Heimatkunde (research of the fatherland) to a new collective cultural identity formation, sometimes referred to in scholarship as Kulturnation. Reconstituting the Fatherland in mation history. Ignoring and sometimes ob- Early Modern Livonia scuring the origins of the city of Riga as part Identifying the medievalist impulse in the of a Papal foundation linked to Cistercians local “soil” is particularly necessary since and Crusading Knights or its Hanseatic herit- there is a lack of medieval reception studies age, that the 19th century looked back on, by those who write on Gothic Revival archi- has led to misleading interpretations of the tecture of Riga in ways that would reveal Riga urban environment my doctoral dissertation as a self-referential place. Using medievalism discusses. to enter into this debate entails more than My methodology also relies on medieval the use of and response to the medieval past reception theory which includes the psy- and the scholarly study of these responses.1 chological role sensorial imagination played My use includes the influence of the study of when reconstituting an imagined ‘medieval’ medievalism on later society. modern world in practice. For this I borrow Scholars also hesitate to engage in discus- reception theory from eighteenth century sion about anxieties and ensuing value con- German literary criticism, namely Herder’s flicts driving the formation of a new identity (Johann Gottfried Herder, 1744–1803), of the homeland in ways that would respond revolutionary theory of poesie als praxis, a to the complexity of the various relationships pre-conscious bodily sensation that can only within society; nor do these scholars include be expressed in artistic form applicable for local attitudes to medievalism or pre-Refor- raising consciousness.2 My methodology is 21 RAKSTI 2019. gads 73. sējums 2. numurs further based on Herder’s relativist theory the seventeen-forties.12 It can be said that of culture and anthropological model of phi- Livonia had its own roots for generating me- losophy of history, as well as his psychologi- dievalism. Maybe we can explain it if we ap- cal theory of Einfühlung in historico-cultural proach it as an expression of nostalgia for a studies; a subject-object inter-relationship, lost part of self-identity. since developed by others, notably Hans- I use Edward Casey’s (b. 1939) definition Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), as cultural of nostalgia as the desire for continuity of “a reception hermeneutics.3 past we cannot rejoin” or “re-experience” in Generally, scholars who treat Gothic Re- person, but which has left tantalising rem- vival as a change in taste, argue that it was nants in the present. Remembering, in this preceded by literary reception.4 For the Latvia case is “a combination of … presence and region it is believed there are no texts for me- absence … imagination and memory” to form dieval reception, or if there were, they have a “world-under-nostalgment”. This world is a been destroyed. This leads me to note that the present “world which includes a nostalgic French began by reviving chivalric tales5, Ger- one”, one in which remnants are “directly mans the Minnenlieder6, and inventing Ruin- present to sensuous intuition”. 13 enpoesie7; the Scots simulated legitimation in In support of my argument the follow- Bardic poetry8; but the English rhapsodised ing primary sources will be used: Herder’s about ancient “Gothick Stile” and “gothick” Journal of 1769;14 Gruber’s (Johann Daniel law9; while Scandinavian Sagas were al- Gruber, 1686–1748) Origines Livoniae … ready revived in the seventeenth century.10 (1740);15 visual material from Brotze’s But Herder joined the medieval discourse of (Johann Christoph Brotze, 1742–1823) chivalry through popularphilosophie11, and Monumente … (1790s);16 Mellin’s (Count Wolfgang von Goethe was converted from Ludwig August Mellin, 1754–1835) Atlas … Classicist forms producing uniformity by the (1798);17 and Maydell’s (Ludwig von vision of Strasbourg Cathedral. This raises the Maydell, 1795–1846) Die Bilder zur livlän- question, what literary sources are admissible dischen Geschichte (1839);18 and contem- for generating medievalism. poraneous quotations from August Wilhelm I suggest the medievalist impulse in Livo- Hupel (1737–1819), Friedrich Konrad Gade- nia can be found in the aftermath of the Great busch (1719–1788) and Garlieb Helwig Northern War (1700–1721); a traumatic Merkel (1769–1850). caesura in Livonia’s history that elicited nos- I argue that in the play of power in the talgia for the lost fatherland. The search and Baltic Basin, in which Sweden was forced to reconstitution of the fatherland can then be cede Livonia to Russia in the Great Northern grounded in a medievalist impulse in a com- (1709–1721) that dislocated Livonia into monly shared historical event and at a per- the Russian sphere of influence, was a ca- sonally psychological and emotional level. tastrophe of such overwhelming proportions that it caused a lasting break in the history Nostalgia for the lost fatherland of Livonia.19 Being moved from the eastern- Generally, while major nations in the most front of Europe to become the west- eighteenth century were still looking to the ernmost outpost of a great Asian Empire, Antique Mediterranean civilisation and a I argue, provided the psychological rift from Judeo-Christian world of the East for mod- within which a strong longing arose for the els worthy of emulation, historians in Livonia lost fatherland. were developing a methodology of Heimat- And, although favourable conditions kunde anchored in their own past already in were achieved at the Nysteader Peace Treaty 22 RECONSTITUTING THE FATHERLAND IN EARLY MODERN LIVONIA (1721), the need to maintain at least a publishing foundation-histories and recording minimum of autonomy through diplomatic the Livonian cultural landscape. vigilance had to be continued at the court through the cultivation of an internationally Herder and the new recognised Livonian Landtag (Diet).20 Some consciousness for the medieval modern scholarship even considers the capit- past ulation Treaty of 1721 to be unconstitutional. Herder, who came to Riga from Königs- Edgars Dunsdorfs (1904–2002) has said berg in 1764 and spent four years teaching that the agreement stood on insecure grounds and publishing his seminal ideas there, cap- because the Ritterschaft (matriculated nobil- tures that feeling of dislocation and loss in ity) were not the legitimate representatives of his diary as he departs Riga in 1769.27 He Livonia and it was merely convenient for Pe- describes it as a certain feeling of depletion. ter the Great to strike an agreement with this The old Cathedral was still hidden behind fictitious State.21 He says that Livonia’s entry a clutter of cleaving buildings, the guildhalls, into the Russian Empire as a “State within a which operated on medieval statutes, pre- State”, namely a legally self-governing State ferred the look of Dutch Baroque for their within the Swedish Kingdom, was a fictitious gables, and the Teutonic Order Castle was pretence.22 draped in a mantle of serenity. But Herder More recently, the historian, Roger Bartlett was not focused on the urban landscape — (1950), has suggested that the legal status he notes a rupture in human history — what of the Nystaeder agreement which promised has been identified as the first inkling of a a certain amount of autonomy and respect new consciousness for the medieval past.28 for cultural and religious continuity, was little And although his biographer, Rudolf “more than a unilaterally imposed settlement Haym (1821–1901), described Riga as hav- [but] less than an international treaty … ap- ing “a lively hierarchy of interlocking institu- proximating to the contracts made between tions … all taking a share in power and re- electoral princes and their subjects in the sponsibility”29, Herder, in the privacy of his Holy Roman Empire”.23 In fact, negotiations diary, as I will show, notes Riga as depleted, for Provincial autonomy were often aggravat- and that the free spirit of the Hanseatic trad- ed in anticipation of one-sided developments ing cities in the Baltic Basin generally had with despotic rulers of Russia.24 vanished.30 The continued procrastinations by Russia World events since the discovery of the to evacuate from parts of Livonia by 1721 as New World had affected this small corner of agreed and the continued efforts by Sweden the world, and the golden age of Hanseatic to regain territories lost in the Baltic; the in- trade was forgotten not only in Riga, Visby troduction of Russian Orthodoxy as the State on Gotland, and Lübeck, but in the whole of religion; the removal of the Lutheran Con- northern Europe — as Herder notes. Visu- sistorium to St Petersburg, and the height- alising the spirit of the past as, what Casey ened tension between the Lutheran Church describes as “a way of being in the world”, and Slavophiles25, are some of the highlights Herder feels its absence.31 He says he de- which continue to be discussed in the nine- sires the “magic” and “spirit” of old Riga, to teenth century.