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About Vilnius: City Of Strangers
Product Description Presents the history of the capital city of Lithuania from its 14th century legendary beginnings up to 2009, when Vilnius bears the distinction of European Capital of Culture. Besides applying the traditional apparatus of historical investigation and referring to a large amount of sources, the special feature of this book is the ample quotes from travelers who passed through the city during their own life journeys. This list ranges from known artistic giants (such as writers Dostoyevsky, Ostrovsky, Tolstoy, Döblin, and Brodsky) through political and cultural icons (such as German general Ludendorff and the Emperors Napoleon and Alexander), to equally compelling forgotten European personas who mark entire generations back to the 14th century.The subtitle refers to the fact that until quite recently, ethnic Lithuanians rarely formed the majority of the inhabitants of Vilnius. Contents; Prologue Chapter 1: The Brink of Europe Chapter 2: Mapping Sarmatia Chapter 3: Enlightenment Shadows Chapter 4: Napoleon s Curse Chapter 5: Russian Intrigue Chapter 6: German Intrusion Chapter 7: The Absent Nation Chapter 8: Maelstrom Europe Notes Illustrations Cited Works Index Review Vilnius Contested City In a modern Europe Vilnius can seem peripheral. Mr Briedis, however, begins by noting that when French geographers recently plotted the mid-point between Europe s cartographical extremes, they found the continent s true centre was a derelict farmhouse just outside the city. Foreign visitors have left few written accounts, but Mr Briedis uses them all as sources. A hapless papal delegation provides the first. In 1324 it tried and failed to persuade Lithuania s great pagan ruler, Gediminas, to adopt Christianity. He showed no desire to forsake Perkunas the thunder god, berating his visitors for their intolerance. Why do you always talk about Christian love? he asked the pope s men. Where do you find so much misery, injustice, violence, sin and greed, if not among the Christians? Lithuania eventually adopted Christianity, along with a dynastic deal with Poland, in 1387. A cathedral was built on the pagan temple, the holy fires doused and the sacred groves felled. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania flourished. At its height in the 16th century it was a vast multiconfessional empire, stretching to the Black Sea, with no fewer than six legal languages, including Hebrew and Armenian. Even as that declined, the Vilnius style of Baroque architecture ripened in glory, a splendid autumn in one of Mr Briedis s many well-turned phrases, that paid a gracious farewell to its phantom golden age . The most poignant chapter is on cemeteries past and present, many of which were desecrated by the Soviets. Mass graves are still unearthed in Vilnius. They hold victims of Stalin s NKVD, of the Nazis, and as in one recent example thousands of fallen soldiers from Napoleon s shattered Grande Armée. Vanished civilisations and lost empires leave a city stalked by horror and steeped in wonder. --The Economist About the Author Laimonas Briedis is a cultural geographer, who received his degree at the University of British Columbia.
