INTRODUCTION

Der Neger malt den Teufel weiß; und der Lette will nicht in den Himmel, sobald Deutsche da sind.

—Johann Gottfried Herder1

In 1996 Jürgen Heeg wrote in his analysis of Garlieb Merkel’s work2 of 1796, “durch die Nationalisierung der Letten und Esten wurde die stän-dische Ordnung in den Ostseeprovinzen Rußlands in ihren Grundfesten in Frage gestellt.”3 This process of emancipation and nationalization gained particular momentum in the second half of the eighteenth century and forms part of the European movement of the Enlightenment. The national dimension of Garlieb Merkel’s work arose out of an agrarian and social reform discourse that publicized the long-standing cruel and debilitating state of near slavery in which the indigenous populations were held by the Baltic German landholding minority. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) is regarded as the pivotal thinker central in identify-ing and articulating the essential characteristics of a nation at this time.4 He infl uenced the emerging reform discourse as well. The agrarian and

2 THE NATIONALIZATION OF LATVIANS

social issues connected to serfdom in Livonia are considered by scholars to be the central ones of the Livonian Enlightenment.

The writers prominent in this discourse in the 1780s and 1790s were Heinrich Johann von Jannau (1753–1821), Wilhelm Christian Friebe (1761–1811), Karl Philip Michael Snell (1753–1806), and Garlieb Helwig Merkel (1769–1850). August Wilhelm Hupel’s (1737–1819) publications—the Nordische Miscellaneen and the Neue Nordische Miscellaneen5—provided an important literary forum in which an enlightened discourse focused on the indigenous Latvians, and the issue of serfdom was discussed by advocates and opponents of reform and improvement of the conditions of the indigenous Latvian population. The Baltic German landholding aristocracy made up, at best, between 0.5 and 1.0% of the entire Livonian population6 within the Livonian Stän-degesellschaft.7 Poverty, maltreatment, and social and political disparity were major issues of the agrarian and social reform agenda.

There exists widespread consensus among the scholarly experts that the radical—and at times creative—reinterpretation of history in Livo-nia was a main tenet of the polemical argumentation aimed at improv-ing the lot of the indigenous and enthralled Latvian and Estonian serfs in Livonia.8 However, there has been comprehensive and holistic study neither of the historical, anthropological, and ethnographical dimensions of this discourse that led to the nationalization9 of the Latvians, nor of its implications for the fi rst half of the nineteenth century. Research has typically focused on the nature of the agrarian and social reform propos-als and not the changing nature of the terminology, modes, and strategies of argumentation employed in the discourse over this period of time. This book seeks to fi ll this gap by critically examining the works of the agrarian and social reform discourse and the strategies of argumenta-tion employed not only in publicizing the plight and conditions of the Latvians but also in reviewing the historical, anthropological, and eth-nographical dimensions of the Latvian national character and identity in the late eighteenth century.

This literary reform discourse can be broken into a number of stages that ultimately resulted in a nationalization of Latvian identity in the

3Introduction

late eighteenth century. Analyzing the veracity of the examined authors’ historical accounts and their social and political critiques of Livonian society highlights a shift to a more anthropocentric, ethnocentric, and polemical approach to dealing with the Latvian serfs that redefi ned the nature of argumentation in this discourse in the 1780s and 1790s. Hence this work considers a new aspect of agrarian and social reform in Livonia in these two decades—namely, the role that eighteenth-century anthropological,10 ethnographical, and historical ideas played as agents of social and political change and in invoking a Latvian national and cultural identity. In this respect, Livonia makes an excel-lent case study.

An important argument of this book, then, is that the “nationalization” of the Latvians occurred as a result of historiographical, anthropologi-cal, and ethnographical ideas introduced into the Livonian agrarian and social reform discourse. The reorganization of Livonian society that fol-lowed the conclusion of the Great Northern War (1700–1721) adversely affected the rights and conditions of the indigenous Latvian peasantry. Legal and political changes severely impacted the status of the Latvian peasant in the fi rst half of the eighteenth century. The emergence of attempts to reform the Livonian agrarian society in the 1760s was moti-vated in part by the sincere desire to improve the spiritual and material living and working conditions as well as the status of the Latvian serf. The agrarian and social issues connected to serfdom in Livonia were primary issues of the Livonian Enlightenment. The arguments employed struck a chord of resonance among some enlightened Baltic German landholding squires.

Overall, however, it can be said that the lack of substantial reform and progressive change resulted in a radicalization of the argument for agrarian and social reform through the adaptation of a more vehemently polemical approach and the uptake and incorporation of new histori-cal and anthropological ideas in the arguments focusing on the cultural, social, and national identity and character of the indigenous Latvians. Thus the reason for this study is to shed further light on the interplay of ideas informing the agrarian and social reform discourse in Livonia that

4 THE NATIONALIZATION OF LATVIANS

led to the nationalization of Latvian identity at the end of the eighteenth century. To this end, this work employs an interdisciplinary approach with particular emphasis on historiography and comparative historical and anthropological methods of the late eighteenth century.

My evaluation, therefore, necessitates a reconsideration of the impli-cations that the transformation of the agrarian and social reform dis-course had for the cultural, social, and national identity of the Latvian peasantry in the latter half of the eighteenth and fi rst half of the nine-teenth century. This, therefore, entails not only a comparative historical analysis of the contemporary writers of the 1780s and 1790s in Livo-nia with that of the cumulative historical record upheld in both German and Latvian scholarly literature, but also the careful consideration of how the introduction of a historical, anthropological, and ethnographical dimension transformed—and subsequently “nationalized”—the Livo-nian agrarian and social reform discourse in the 1790s. This is important as it contributes to the investigation of the historical, anthropological, and ethnographical discourse initiated by Germans, especially in rela-tion to issues such as serfdom and the national characteristics of peoples in eastern Europe that took place in Germany from the 1770s to the 1790s. This had important implications for the way cultures, nations, and societies—including those in western Europe—were understood. This is then considered within the context of Livonia as a case study. Thus the argument presented in this book to assess the nationalization of the Latvians is historical, descriptive, and analytical. The evidence substan-tiates the argument that a nationalization of the Latvians was strongly enhanced through a discourse critically describing the historical origins and the national character and identity of the Latvians and ascribing eth-nicity and language as determinants of social station and status.

BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION

Feodor Dostoyevsky, in his novel Crime and Punishment, crystallized a perception of a Livonian peasant and the extreme hardship of serf-dom in Livonia, although he was writing many years after the institution of serfdom in Livonia had been abolished. Dostoyevsky’s character

5Introduction

Raskolnikov fumes at his sister Dunechka’s betrothal to Mr. Luhzin. Refl ecting on their engagement and claiming to have a profoundly sub-liminal understanding of what he implies to be his sister’s servile and hardworking character, he concludes that she would “rather go and work with the Negroes on some plantation-owner’s estate or with the Latvian peasants of some Baltic German than defi le her spirit and her moral sen-sibility through such a liaison.”11 Changing the status of the Latvian peas-antry and the institution of serfdom were among issues considered to be central to the Enlightenment in the Russian Baltic province of Livonia in the latter half of the eighteenth century. A focus on social and political injustice—particularly the working and living conditions—confronting the Latvians was also to become a driving issue of the Enlightenment and reform in Livonia.

FIGURE 1. The administrative districts of the Russian Baltic provinces in 1783: attachment to vol. 8 of Hupel’s Nordische Miscellaneen (1784).

Source. August Wilhelm Hupel, Hg., „Anhang,“ Nordische Miscellaneen Bd. 8. (Riga: Hart-knoch, 1784).

6 THE NATIONALIZATION OF LATVIANS

In the decade following the end of the cold war in Europe, there was a renaissance in historical, cultural, and Enlightenment studies of the Baltic states by authors writing in German. This resulted in a substantial increase in publications examining all aspects of Germany’s historical and cultural ties with this region. These publications have contributed greatly to the acknowledgment and recognition of the historical and cul-tural signifi cance of Germans in this region of Europe. Important con-tributions have been made in many areas of study, but particularly to the agrarian, constitutional, and sociocultural history of the late eighteenth-century Enlightenment period in the Baltic region. As a result, the issue of serfdom has been critically reexamined in the attempt to formulate an adequate theory of serfdom and social relations through an analysis of the historical causes and forms of serfdom.

The study of agrarian relations and the nationalization of the Latvians in the late eighteenth century has been relevant, given the fact that it echoed certain similarities in post-Soviet Latvia following the reestab-lishment of national independence in 1991 and the accompanying decol-lectivization of agriculture. More recently, as Latvia has reorientated towards the West—becoming a willing member of the European Union and NATO—it has again become topical and important to examine the origins of the nationalized modern identity, which, as this study details, has its origins in the late eighteenth-century Livonian agrarian and social reform discourse. While the works examined in this book are principally primary sources from the late 1780s and the 1790s related to the Latvi-ans in the context of the agrarian and social reform discourse in Livonia, an extensive range of secondary literature is also considered and, where particularly pertinent, discussed in greater detail.12

PRIMARY SOURCES

Hupel’s publications—the Topographische Nachrichten von Lief- und Ehstland (1774–1782), Nordische Miscellaneen (1781–1791), and Neue Nordische Miscellaneen (1792–1798)—are referred to extensively, particularly the Nordische Miscellaneen and the Neue Nordische

7Introduction

Miscellaneen, given the particular focus of this study in the 1780s and 1790s. Arthur Poelchau’s research on the publishing activities of the Hartknochs in the Baltic region outlines all the works published in Mitau and then in Riga from 1762 until 1804.13 From this research, it can be established that the unbroken publishing relationship between Johann Friedrich Hartknoch and Hupel commenced in 1771. Hupel’s impor-tance as a driving force in the literary and publishing activities in the Baltic region—where he acted as coordinator, compiler, author, and edi-tor continuously from the 1770s until the 1790s—cannot be overstated. The main primary sources examined, however, are the works by the aforementioned writers Jannau, Friebe, Snell, and Merkel.

Other little-known primary sources such as that of Andreas Meyer—whose work of 1777, Briefe eines jungen Reisenden durch Liefl and, in-cluded accounts, observations, and impressions of the conditions of the Latvians in Livonia in the 1770s—are considered and examined as a counterbalance to the observations and claims made by advocates of the agrarian and social reform discourse in the 1780s and 1790s. Meyer’s accounts of the conditions of the Latvians resonate strongly and con-cur with the accounts rendered by the authors of the primary sources evaluated.

Jannau’s works—Geschichte der Sklaverey und Charakter der Bau-ern in Lief- und Ehstland: Ein Beytrag zur Verbesserung der Leibeigen-schaft Genaueste Berechnung eines Haaken14 in 1786 and Geschichte von Lief- und Ehstland pragmatisch vorgetragen part one in 1793 and part two in 1796—form an important part of his literary contribution to the reform discourse in Livonia. Friebe’s works on the agrarian and social issues in Livonia were published in Hupel’s Nordische Miscel-laneen. The works Etwas über Leibeigenschaft und Freiheit, sonderlich in Hinsicht auf Liefl and of 1788 and Erster Anfang zur Kultur der lief-ländischen Bauern of 1789 are analyzed. His contribution, while impor-tant and pragmatic, was not as radical and vehement in his analysis and criticism of the nature of agrarian and social relations in Livonia. Snell’s analysis of the Livonian agrarian constitution and the conditions of the Latvian and Estonian serfs forms a part of a broader work titled

8 THE NATIONALIZATION OF LATVIANS

Beschreibung der russischen Provinzen an der Ostsee, of Jena, 1794. The sensational accounts of the desensitized human, moral, and spiritual condition of the Latvian were based on his own empirical and anecdotal accounts and evidence based on his experiences living in Riga and his travels throughout Livonia.

Finally, Merkel’s groundbreaking work Die Letten vorzüglich in Lief-land am Ende des philosophischen Jahrhunderts,15 published in 1796, marked his literary engagement and many issues central to the Latvi-ans in Livonia. An evaluation of Christoph Meiners’ (1747–1810)16 historical, anthropological, and ethnographical writings, such as Ueber die Natur der Slawischen Völker in Europa (1790) and Ueber die Beg-riffe verschiedener Völker von dem Werthe der Jungfrauschafft (1787), when compared to Merkel’s works, such as Ueber Dichtergeist und Dichtung unter den Letten (1797), Die Vorzeit Liefl ands (1798), and Wannem Ymanta: eine lettische Sage (1802), can be seen to represent two very different evaluations and perceptions of the nations and cul-tures of northern and eastern Europe by Germans in the late eighteenth century. Meiners’ writing represents a very negative appraisal of the peo-ples and nations of northern and eastern Europe, while Merkel’s work can be considered to have positively embraced and extolled the cultural and linguistic diversity through his contribution to the study and works encompassing Latvian history, language, anthropology, and culture.

SECONDARY SOURCES

While the Livonian agrarian and social reform discourse examined the means of improving agricultural output and production—as well as advo-cating improvement of the living and working conditions of the Latvian peasantry—it also became increasingly critical of the legal and histori-cal status of the Latvian serf. In the last decades of the eighteenth cen-tury, those reform-minded advocates participating in this discourse and publishing works and treatises advocating improved Latvian rights and welfare became increasingly polemical in tone and criticism of the Livo-nian Ständegesellschaft.17 Commentators such as Jürgen Heeg18 have

9Introduction

investigated the complex issue of serfdom through an examination of the way Merkel as a writer and publicist criticized Livonia’s feudal agrarian and social structures, casting relations between landholding nobles and serfs in an ethnic light.

Roger Bartlett19 has addressed the issue of serfdom and how Catherine the Great’s political policy and reform agenda played out in Livonia, with particular reference to the authors “J. G. Eisen and G. H. Merkel.” Thomas Taterka’s Nachwort,20 in a rerelease of Merkel’s work of 1796, set out a brief yet concise account of the contemporary scene and issues that formed the backdrop to Merkel’s important work. The institution of serfdom reached its apex in the eighteenth century, in the present-day countries of Latvia and Estonia. The intensifi cation of serfdom in Livonia has been viewed in the critical literature as a major consequence of the Great Northern War (1700–1721). The consequences of this war had a lasting impact on northern Europe. Acknowledgment, too, that the historical origins of the Livonian agrarian constitution dated back to the Baltic crusades in the thirteenth century forms the general out-line of the social and political order that was characteristic of Livonia’s Ständegesellschaft.

In 1997, in his Versuch einer Typologie,21 Christoph Schmidt22 ad-dressed the institution of serfdom throughout the Baltic Sea region in a comparative analysis of its historical developments and manifestations in Livonia, Poland, Russia, and other countries. In the view of Schmidt, it was the exceptional military nature of German colonization in the Baltic region that defi ned the development of agrarian relations and the agrarian constitution in Livonia. Schmidt contrasts the thirteenth-century military colonization of Livonia with that of Prussia. He identi-fi es a number of important factors in this process that would come to have signifi cant consequences in the evolution of agrarian, social, and ethnic relations in Livonia:

Daneben waren die ethnischen Verhältnisse in Livland so vielfältig wie die politischen. Anders als in Preußen hatte in Livland kein Zuzug deutscher Bauern eingesetzt, sondern nur der von Rittern und Kaufl euten. Das Überdauern der ostbaltischen Landbevölkerung

10 THE NATIONALIZATION OF LATVIANS

mag dazu beigetragen haben, daß die Unterwerfung Livlands lang-wierig und vielleicht noch gewaltsamer als die Preußens war.23

Erich Donnert24 has analyzed serfdom from a number of different perspectives in both the former DDR and reunifi ed Germany. In 1933 Nicolai Wihksninsch’s dissertation25 investigated Aufklärung (Enlighten-ment) and the Agrarfrage (the agrarian and social reform issues) in Livo-nia. His work was a comprehensive analysis, the infl uence of which was marred by the political and ideological dictates of his time. It is the view of Wihksninsch that the problem central to the Aufklärung in Livonia in the latter half of the eighteenth century was the Agrarfrage. The Agrar-frage was characterized by the dual issues of serfdom and the abnormal conditions of the Livonian peasantry. In the nineteenth century, Alexan-der Tobien’s seminal work26 for its time detailed the Agrargesetzgebung in Livonia in a comprehensive historical work with readier access to primary and contemporary sources of the late nineteenth century.

In addition to this, authors such as Reinhard Wittram,27 Georg von Rauch,28 Gert von Pistohlkors,29 and Hubertus Neuschäffer 30 have explored and considered various aspects of the Livonian agrarian constitution, espe-cially the institution of serfdom and Baltic German society. Pistohlkors, in particular, has analyzed the nineteenth-century Baltic German attitudes to the Latvians and Estonians fi ltered through the perspective of their privi-leged position while also considering arguments that incorporated ethnic, national, and social station dimensions.31

Contributions from diverse areas of Latvian scholarship can be bro-ken into a number of periods in which the discussion must be viewed in the context of the ideological dictates of the times. The fi rst period of independent Latvian scholarship correlated with the timeframe of the fi rst independent Latvian Republic—mostly in the late 1920s and 1930s. Topics explored the nature of indigenous peasant—Baltic German relations in a number of ways. Authors such as Arveds Švabe investi-gated the Baltic German nobility’s rights in Courland. In addition to this, authors such as Fr. Balodis examined the Latvians and Latvian culture in prehistorical times.32

11Introduction

From 1940 onwards, there were considerable disruptions due to the war Latvia found itself drawn into. From 1945 until 1991, there were two divergent streams in Latvian scholarship: academics and scholars who formed part of the Latvian diaspora around the Western world, and Latvian, Marxist-infl uenced scholars writing under the edicts of an ideo-logically driven Communist political apparatus in the Soviet republic of Latvia. M. Stepermanis’ investigation33 of peasant unrest and upris-ings in Livonia from the period 1750–1784 provides great insight into a dimension of relations between the Latvian serfs and German landhold-ing nobles, despite the Marxist ideological overtures and interpretation of historical events. Given the ideological constraints, Heinrich Strods34 can, nevertheless, be considered a prolifi c and important writer whose research produced valuable historical and statistical insights that can act as a guide in his breakdown of social, demographic, and other historical information of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Latvia. Thus his work, especially in areas such as Latvian serf income streams outside of agriculture and farming in the fi rst half of the nineteenth century, is highly relevant to any investigation of the Livonian Ständegesellschaft when considering the impact of agrarian and social reforms.35

Since Latvian independence, Strods has continued to publish a number of insightful and important articles and essays on Livonian history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His evaluation positively appraises the Baltic German baron Carl Friedrich Schoultz (1720–1782)—who attempted to introduce reforms of agrarian and social relations on Baltic German landholding manorial estates in Livonia—as an important rep-resentative of the enlightened Baltic German nobility.36 In the Latvian diaspora, writers such as Edgars Dunsdorfs,37 Andrejs Johansons,38 and Andrejs Plakans39 were infl uential, and they wrote on historical, anthro-pological, and ethnographical dimensions of eighteenth-century Livo-nia, with particular emphasis on the Latvian serf.

In the time since Latvian independence in 1991, a vibrant and prolifi c intellectual scene in Latvia has resulted in the strong engagement of Latvian scholars with many of the issues central and peripheral to Livonia’s Ständegesellschaft. Arturs Boruks has investigated the

12 THE NATIONALIZATION OF LATVIANS

historical agrarian and agricultural-farming link of Latvians to the land throughout their history—from ancient times (lasting until the twelfth cen-tury) to the modern day. Kaspars Kļaviņš makes a valuable contribution to this fi eld of studies through the consideration of such issues as theBaltic Enlightenment and Perceptions Medieval Latvian History.40 The two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Merkel’s work on the Latvians in 1796 resulted in much research being conducted on his literary contribution in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century.

In the late 1990s, Ella Buceniece, in a comparative study, examined contemporary impressions of Merkel’s work from a philosophical per-spective, while Ojārs Skudra41 looks at the journalistic and communi-cative historical aspect of Merkel and his work on the Latvians. Their assessment refl ects a generally positive evaluation of Merkel’s journalis-tic and intellectual contribution in Latvian literature that extends beyond a stereotypical appraisal of the role Merkel played in the eventual abo-lition of serfdom in Livonia and the widespread academic perception of Merkel as a cultural historian and cultural philosopher. Jānis Rozen-bergs examines Merkel’s facilitating role, motivation, and contribution in the study and publication of Latvian folklore. Ojārs Zanders analyzes the friendship between Herder and Merkel as well as Herder’s enduring intellectual infl uence on Merkel.42

Tovio Raun and Andrejs Plakans examine Miroslav Hroch’s model of the three phases of nationalism from the invocation of the national to the realization of political nationhood in smaller European nations. In relation to the Estonian and Latvian national movements, this provides a workable theoretical framework that also explains the transitional phases from agrarian peasant society to the politically self-conscious and viable conception of an independent nation-state.43 The eighteenth-century reinvention of concepts such as culture, nation, and history—which have become embedded in the fabric of modern social, political, and geo-graphical reality—have their origins in the Enlightenment.

At this stage, it is appropriate to redirect attention back to the rele-vance and importance of this study. When the Baltic states of Estonia,

13Introduction

Latvia, and Lithuania regained their sovereignty as nation-states in 1991, another period of foreign domination ended. The demise of the Soviet Union and its sphere of political and military infl uence has given rise to a number of complex issues for the Baltic states and Europe as a whole. The Baltic states moved quickly to underline their national identity, sovereignty, and cultural affi nity with western Europe. This realignment was also aimed at reestablishing and reaffi rming political, economic, historical, and religious links with western Europe. This radical reorien-tation away from the Russian cultural, political, and military sphere of infl uence has raised a number of questions about cultural and national identity. It also evokes certain questions about the nation and culture with all its political, social, economic, and historical dimensions.

The Baltic states maintain that they have always identifi ed their cultural past and future as belonging to that of western Europe. This is evidenced by the radical political and cultural reorientation away from Russia in the years since 1991. In more recent times, the issues of European Union expansion and NATO membership and commitments have raised and accentuated a number of interesting questions concerning cultural and national identity. In addition to this, smaller EU member states must bal-ance national identity and interests while contending with the broader European issues, including the following: What are the defi ning charac-teristics of Europe (i.e., what is Europe?). Where do Europe’s boundar-ies begin or end? Is European transnationalism a viable prospect? Does a homogenous European culture, in fact, exist, given the recent problems with agreeing upon and adapting a European constitution? Central to the concept of identity—be it Latvian or European identity—are the ideas of shared language, culture, traditions, and values.