Andrievs Niedra (
old orthography: ''Andreews Needra''; 8 February 1871 – 25 September 1942)
was a Latvian writer,
Lutheran pastor and the Prime Minister of the German
puppet government in Latvia between April and June 1919, during the
Latvian War of Independence.
Niedra's first collection of poems was published when he was only nineteen years old, and he was still in his teens when his stories based on history and folklore began to appear in the newspaper ''Baltijas Vēstnesis''. Between 1890 and 1899 he studied theology at the
University of Dorpat (now
Tartu
Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the Northern European country's political and financial capital, Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 91,407 (as of 2021). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of ...
). Aesthetically blending realistic fantasy with idealism, his stories, criticism and plays often treated the formation of the Latvian intelligentsia and the situation of the peasantry with regard to the dominant
Baltic Germans. Believing that society can only develop through evolution rather than revolution, Niedra was a fierce opponent of
socialism and came to be seen as a reactionary in an increasingly revolutionary society.
After collaborating with the German military authorities and their defeat, Niedra fled Latvia. Returning in 1924, he was tried for treason and banished. In exile, the pastor of a German congregation in
East Prussia
East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label=Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
, Niedra took German citizenship and penned a lengthy work entitled ''Tautas nodevēja atmiņas'' (''The Memoirs of a Traitor to the Nation''); the first edition of the first part was destroyed by the dictator
Kārlis Ulmanis after the
15 May 1934 coup d'état, and his works were banned. Niedra returned to Latvia during the
occupation of Latvia by Nazi Germany and died in Riga.
References
Further reading
* Andrievs Niedra: ''Tautas nodevēja atmiņas. Piedzīvojumi cīņā pret lielimiecismu''. Zinātne, Riga 1998, .
* Inta Pētersone (Ed.): ''Latvijas Brīvības cīņas 1918 – 1920. Enciklopēdja''. Preses nams, Riga 1999, .
External links
*
1871 births
1942 deaths
People from Gulbene Municipality
People from the Governorate of Livonia
Latvian Lutheran clergy
Latvian politicians
Latvian anti-communists
Latvian writers
20th-century Latvian politicians
University of Tartu alumni
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