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Žiburys Society
Žiburys Society (''žiburys'' means light, beacon; ) was a society established in 1906 that organized and maintained Lithuanian schools in the Suwałki Governorate of the Congress Poland, Russian Empire (later, Suvalkija region of independent Lithuania). Organized and run by priests, the society supported and promoted Roman Catholic ideas and worldview. The society organized primary schools and later gymnasiums. In 1907, it established pro-gymnasium for girls in Marijampolė. In 1918, it established several Gymnasium (school), gymnasiums. Žiburys, along with other Lithuanian organizations, was closed by the new Soviet regime following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940), occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union in June 1940. Establishment After the failed Uprising of 1863, the Russian Empire, Tsarist regime enacted strict Russification policies: the Lithuanian press ban, Lithuanian press was prohibited, all non-government schools were closed, and government scho ...
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Suwałki Governorate
Suwałki Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of Congress Poland of the Russian Empire, which had its seat in the city of Suwałki. It covered a territory of about . History In 1867, the territories of the Augustów Governorate and the Płock Governorates were re-organised to form the Płock Governorate, the Suwałki Governorate (consisting mostly of the Augustów Governorate territories) and a recreated Łomża Governorate. After World War I, the governorate was split between the Second Polish Republic and Lithuania, mostly along ethnic lines (with an exception of the area in the proximity of Puńsk and north of Sejny). The Polish part, known as Suwałki Region, was incorporated into the Białystok Voivodeship (1919-1939), Białystok Voivodeship. The Lithuanian region of Suvalkija was named after the governorate. Demographics and economy According to contemporary Russian Empire statistics, from 1889 the Suwałki Governorate was predominantly Lithua ...
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Lekėčiai
Lekėčiai is a small town in the Šakiai District Municipality, Marijampolė County, in southwestern Lithuania. Location and geography Lekėčiai is located in the Šakiai District Municipality, Marijampolė County, in southwestern Lithuania. It's in the center of forests, with the Rūdšilis forests to the north and the Paryžinė and Vincentavas forests to the south. The Liekė River, a tributary of the Nemunas, flows through the town. History Lekėčiai was first mentioned in 1506, when Grand Duke Alexander Jagiellon granted the local grove to Jonas Sapiega as a reward for his service in wars against Moscow. In 1863, Lekėčiai witnessed battles between Aleksandras Andruškevičius' rebel group and between Russian Cossacks, in which 15 rebels were killed. After World War II, local partisans established bunkers in the nearby Rūdšilis forest, and resistance leader Julijonas Būtėnas was killed there in 1951. Demographics According to the 2011 census, the town ...
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Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė
Gabrielė Petkevičaitė (18 March 1861 – 14 June 1943) was a Lithuanian educator, writer, and activist. Her pen name Bitė (''Bee'') eventually became part of her last name. Encouraged by Povilas Višinskis, she joined public life and started her writing career in 1890, becoming a prominent member of the Lithuanian National Revival. She was the founder and chair of the Žiburėlis society to provide financial aid to struggling students, one of the editors of the newspaper ''Lietuvos žinios'', and an active member of the women's movement. In 1920, she was elected to the Constituent Assembly of Lithuania and chaired its first session. Her Literary realism, realist writing centered on exploring the negative impact of the social inequality. Her largest work, two-part novel ''Ad astra'' (1933), depicts the rising Lithuanian National Revival. Together with Žemaitė, she co-wrote several plays. Her diary, kept during World War I, was published in 1925–1931 and 2008–2011. Biogra ...
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Žemaitė
Žemaitė (, , "Samogitian woman") was the pen name of Julija Beniuševičiūtė-Žymantienė ( – 7 December 1921). She was a Lithuanian/Samogitian writer, democrat and educator. Born to impoverished gentry, she became one of the major participants in the Lithuanian National Revival. She wrote about peasant life in the style best described as realism. Life Žemaitė was born in a manor house near Plungė in the Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire. Her father Antanas Beniuševičius (died 1878) served as a manor steward and her mother Julijana Sciepuraitė (died 1874) was a housekeeper. Žemaitė had three sisters. As a child, she was forbidden by her parents to play with the children of serfs or learn the Lithuanian language. Like many of the Lithuanian nobility, her parents had become Polonized, and were of the belief that speaking Lithuanian was a step backward socially, so her parents used the surname Bieniuszewicz and the Polish language in everyday life, and they al ...
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Mikas Petrauskas
Mikas Petrauskas (1873–1937) was a Lithuanian composer and choirmaster best known as the author of the first Lithuanian Birutė (opera), opera ''Birutė'' (1906). He was an elder brother of the singer Kipras Petrauskas. Petrauskas learned to play organ (music), church organ from his father and began working as an organist at the age of 15. He worked in Labanoras, Obeliai, and before enrolling at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1901. As a student, he wrote and staged the first Lithuanian operettas. In 1905, he moved to Vilnius where he became leader of the choir of Kanklės of Vilnius Society and staged his Birutė (opera), opera ''Birutė'' in 1906. Trouble with the Tsarist police forced him to leave the Russian Empire first for Switzerland and then for the United States. There he organized various concerts and theater performances, opened a music school, and established and led choirs and other performing groups among Lithuanian Americans. He organized and led Birutė cho ...
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Birutė (opera)
''Birutė'' is a two-act opera composed by Mikas Petrauskas based on the play by Gabrielius Landsbergis-Žemkalnis. It was first performed on 6 November 1906 in Vilnius and became the first Lithuanian national opera. The plot is based on the medieval legend about the love between Birutė and Grand Duke of Lithuania Kęstutis recorded in the Lithuanian Chronicles. The opera was written for the amateur Lithuanian performers and thus is mostly valued for its historical significance. Plot The opera is set during the 14th-century Lithuanian Crusade. Winrich von Kniprode, komtur of the Teutonic Order, wishes to marry Birutė, daughter of the ruler of Palanga. In Act I, von Kniprode sends his envoys to persuade Birutė's father to agree to the marriage. If persuasion and gifts fail, they are prepared to take her by force. Birutė weeps and asks her father to kill her instead. However, '' krivių krivaitis'' (chief pagan priest) Lizdeika decrees that it is the will of the gods for Birut ...
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Christoph Von Schmid
Christoph von Schmid (15 August 1768 Dinkelsbühl, Bavaria – 3 September 1854 Augsburg) was a writer of children's stories and an educator. His stories were very popular and translated into many languages. His best known work in the English-speaking world is ''The Basket of Flowers'' (''Das Blumenkörbchen''). In this work, fifteen-year-old Mary is taught all the principles of godliness through the flowers planted and cared for by her father, James, who is the king's gardener. When she is falsely accused of stealing and temporarily banished, her friends try to find some evidence in order to prove that Mary didn't do anything wrong until it's too late. In recent years, ''The Basket of Flowers'' has been published in the United States as part of the Lamplighter Family Collection. Biography Christoph von Schmid studied theology and was ordained priest in the Catholic Church in 1791. He then served as assistant in several parishes until 1796, when he was placed at the head of a la ...
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Jean-François Bayard
Jean-François Alfred Bayard (; 17 March 1796, Charolles, Saône-et-Loire – 20 February 1853, Paris) was a French playwright. He was the nephew of fellow playwright Eugène Scribe. Life As a law student and a lawyer's clerk, Bayard wrote with passion for the theatre and, after several attempts, had a great success at the Gymnase theatre, with ''la Reine de seize ans'' (1828, in-8°). One of the most fertile-minded and skilful vaudeville writers of his era, he made a close friendship with Eugène Scribe, often collaborating with him on plays and marrying his niece. Belonging to the school of Dancourt and Picard, he wrote with extreme ease, producing more than 200 plays for several theatres, sometimes alone, sometimes in collaboration. Many of his plays were remarked upon for their witty cheerfulness, and for not excluding sensitivity and everything else that was in vogue in the 19th century. He most often wrote vaudevilles, though he also had success with drama and even hig ...
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Aleksandras Fromas-Gužutis
Aleksandras Fromas known by his pen name Gužutis (1822–1900) was a Lithuanian writer, one of the first authors of Lithuanian plays and dramas. Born to a family of an office worker, Fromas received some education at the Kražiai College. He worked in various government offices until he purchased a farm in 1853 where he lived and worked until his death. Encouraged by his neighbor Mečislovas Davainis-Silvestraitis, Fromas began publishing his texts in the Lithuanian press in 1884. While he wrote three novels, some short stories, and poems, he is mostly known as the author of the first Lithuanian plays. Thirteen plays are known; four of them were published during his lifetime. Most of the plays deal with heroic and romanticized episodes from the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Other plays transformed traditional Lithuanian myths, including Eglė the Queen of Serpents and Jūratė and Kastytis, into literary dramas and dealt with realities of the 19th-century Lithuania, including the ...
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Petras Leonas
Petras Leonas (1864–1938) was a Lithuanian attorney and politician, the first Minister of Justice of the newly independent Lithuania in 1918. After graduating from Moscow University in 1889, Leonas held a government job at various courts in Suwałki and Uzbekistan. He was fired after supporting the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets) during the Russian Revolution of 1905. He returned to Lithuania and took up private law practice, which he had for 32 years. In 1907, he was elected to the second short-lived State Duma of the Russian Empire. During World War I, Leonas retreated to Russia and was deputy chairman of the Lithuanian Society for the Relief of War Sufferers. In March 1917, he was one of the founders of the Democratic National Freedom League. He returned to newly independent Lithuania in 1918 and began working on drafting some of the fundamental legislation. He became the first Minister of Justice in November 1918 and the fourth Minister of Internal Affairs in Apri ...
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Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas
Juozas Tumas also known by the pen name Vaižgantas (20 September 1869 – 29 April 1933) was a Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest and an activist during the Lithuanian National Revival. He was a prolific writer, editor of nine periodicals, university professor, and member of numerous societies and organizations. His most notable works of fiction include the novel ''Pragiedruliai'' (Cloud Clearing) and the narrative ''Dėdės ir dėdienės'' (Uncles and Aunts) about the ordinary village folk. Born to a family of Lithuanian peasants, Tumas was educated at a gymnasium in Daugavpils (present-day Latvia) and Kaunas Priest Seminary. He began contributing to the Lithuanian press, then banned by the Tsarist authorities, in 1889 or 1890. He was ordained as a priest in 1893 and posted to Mitau (present-day Jelgava, Latvia). In 1895, he was reassigned to Mosėdis in northwestern Lithuania. There he organized the publication of ''Tėvynės sargas'' and the book smuggling into Lithuania. His ...
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Vilkaviškis
Vilkaviškis () is a city in southwestern Lithuania, the administrative center of the Vilkaviškis District Municipality. It is located northwest from Marijampolė, at the confluence of and rivers. The city got its name from the Vilkauja River. Initially named ''Vilkaujiškis'', the name was later changed to an easier-to-pronounce form, ''Vilkaviškis''. Until 1941, the city had a large Jewish community, which was killed by the German military and their local collaborators. This is the city from which the 2016 cost-of-living Cauliflower Revolution originated. It is the capital of Vilkaviškis District Municipality, Vilkaviškis city eldership, and Šeimena eldership. Names The names of the city as it is called or was formerly called in other languages spoken by non-Lithuanian ethnic groups which have lived or live in or around the town include: ; ; . Other spelling variants include ''Vilkavishkis'' and ''Wilkowyszki''. History The city was granted city rights in ...
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