Church island on the Daugava

It all began here. Here the outside world pierced the ice above the Baltic tribes’ timelessly flowing life, and from the dimness impenetrable to us, they emerged like bustling fish into the light of our history.

Here, on the banks of the Daugava River, the first Christian missionary in the Baltics, the Augustinian monk Meinhard of Holstein, met the pagan Livonians, our Finno-Ugric language relatives. Meinhard first heard about the pagan tribes of the Baltics from fur traders in Lübeck, and felt a calling to convert them. With the permission of his superior, he set off on a journey alone, and following the traders’ guidance, he reached the Livonians living in the village of Ikšķilā sometimes in the late 1170s. Some of the locals were inclined to the new faith, especially when Meinhard promised that if they become Christians, he would build them a fortress to protect them from attacks by hostile pagan tribes, especially the Lithuanians.

German masons called from Gotland built the castle in 1884, and the first church in the Baltics on a hilltop next to it. The fortress soon lost its importance when, in 1201, Meinhard’s successor, Bishop Albert, founded Riga on a better situated site nearby, and moved his seat there. Today, only a memorial stone stands on its site. The church, however, which was later rebuilt in the Gothic style, stood intact until September 1, 1917, when the Russian army defending Riga trenched in around it, and the German attackers shot the church into ruins. It was never rebuilt again.

The exterior and interior of the church before 1917

The Riga Dam, built in 1974, raised the level of the Daugava River so much that the hilltop became an island. The preserved ruins of the church still stand on it today, next to a memorial stone erected in 1864 by the Baron of Üxküll – because this was the German name for the village –, Boris (1793-1870), a heroic Russian officer in the Napoleonic Wars and the abductor of many women’s hearts, who summarized his exploits in his diary published under the title Arms and the Woman.

The German name may be familiar to some. The Barons of Üxküll included the biologist and philosopher Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), the founder of ethology, whom Konrad Lorenz often refers to. He was born in Tallinn, where his father was mayor, and moved permanently to Germany in 1924.

As we head inland from Riga, we definitely stop at this source of Baltic history. It is summer, the reservoir has dried up, and at this time a small path rises from the water, where you can walk across from the shore to the island. On both sides of it there are the stumps of old trees that have been cut down. The trees may have originally lined the path leading to the church, and they may have been cut down when the reservoir was filled.

Along the slightly curved path, the water of the river has remained in small ponds, covered by water lilies. Where the ponds have also dried up, dry blocks of river mussels cover the ground. Sometimes the pits are still wet, and a strong smell of decay emanates from them. Waterfowl flock everywhere to the shallow water of the reservoir in search of food. On the shore, one or two old fishermen are collecting easy prey.

The ruins of the church, built of irregular limestone, are covered with a tin roof. The double Gothic gate seems to have survived, as well as the pointed arch leading from the forecourt into the nave, with Gothic consoles and vault ribs behind it. The rest is gone. The remains are stabilized by red brick additions.

A path, haphazardly trodden through the knee-high vegetation, leads to the memorial stone, on both side of which is a worn Latin inscription. The side facing the shore – the arriving visitors – is barely legible:

IN MEMORIAM MEINARDI EPISCOPI LIVONUM APOSTOLI HUJUS ECCLESIAE FUNDATORIS ATQUE CONRADI MEINDORPI MILITIS YKESKOLA FORTISSIMI FIDEI PROPUGNATORI

In memory of Bishop Meinhard, Apostle of the Livonians, founder of this church and of Conrad Meindorp, Knight of Ykeskola, the brave defender of faith

Konrad Meindorp (later spelled Meyerdorff), as the term propugnator, “protector with a shield” shows, belonged to the generation that Bishop Albert called as crusaders from the late 1190s to Livonia, the new province that included the later Latvia and Estonia, to protect the already converted Baltic people from the unconverted, and the latter from their own pagan faith. In 1201, Konrad Meindorp received the fortress of Ikšķilā – in Latin Ykeskola, in German Üxküll, in later Latvian Ikšķile –, and thus became the ancestor of the von Uexkülls.

On the other side, the offspring says thanks:

HOC MONUMENTUM DEDICAVIT BORIS DE ÜXKÜLL LIBER BARO EQUESTRI IN ESTONIA ORDINI ADSCRIPTUS VIGGALIA IN MARITIMA HERES 1186 1201 1864

This monument was dedicated by Baron Boris von Uexküll, member of the order of knights in Estonia, heir of Vigāles at the sea 1186 1201 1864

The inscription is still clearly legible in the photograph taken before 1917. The church still stands behind it. The members of the apparently middle-class society no not yet know that they will die a violent death back home or will be killed by homesickness in emigration.

Today, neither the church nor the fortress stand. The Baltic Germans were sent to Germany by Hitler’s order in 1940, before Stalin annexed the Baltic states under the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and exterminated a quarter to a third of their population. Of the Livonians there are perhaps 180 left in coastal fishing villages, and barely a fifth of them speak the Finno-Ugric language of their ancestors. Only this ruin stands here on a hilltop that has become an island, testifying to the determination of a single man who came here, into the unknown, to change history.

We continue inland, towards the still standing Crusader castles and the Estonian border. As we drive along the main street, the soaring apse of a modern church appears at the western end of the village.

We turn in. On the street named after Bishop Meinhard, there is a Carmelite monastery. The inscription on its door says that it was founded by the German Bonifatiuswerk, which supports the Scandinavian and Baltic Catholic diasporas.

We ring the bell. A cheerful, petite, middle-aged nun in white opens the door, and greets us in the name of Jesus in Latvian. I reply in Latin, then switch to German. She is very happy about this: “If you also speak German, you are doubly at home”, she says.

“We wold like to visit the church.” She introduces us, while I ask questions. The monastery was founded at the invitation of the Latvian government, who specifically wanted to establish a Catholic contemplative order in the country. They came to Ikšķile because they found a land here, but they were very happy to be able to settle in the cradle of Latvian Christianity. There are now eight sisters, from Essen. “How are your relations with the Lutheran majority in Latvia?” “Very good. Ecumenism is very strong in Latvia. The Lutheran bishop really likes us.” But now the Catholic bishop of Riga is visiting them, so she hurries back to the dining room. She shows us which door we will close behind us.

The church is a very clean, functional concrete and glass building, with a semicircular apse at one end and the sisters’ isolated chapel at the other, opening from the cloister.

Both the apse and the chapel have a beautiful medieval German wooden statue, obviously copies. The third figurative ornament is the neo-Romanesque relief depicting Bishop Meinhard on the lectern. The fourth one is outside, on the outer wall of the church: the Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus in the beautiful garden around the apse. This is also an island, an island of peace opposite of Meinhard’s church island.

Feast in Riga

No matter how carefully you prepare for a trip, the coincidences will be the most memorable: the challenges you conquer, the unexpected encounters, the celebrations you stumble into. Like this festive weekend in Riga.

The fact that it’s a weekend and a holiday is indicated by wedding photography sessions all over the city. Below: Guests are greeted by the cat from last year’s Oscar-winning Latvian animation movie Flow

Every second Saturday in Riga, a flea market is held in the Wöhrmann Garden (since the Baltic Germans left, Vermanes dārzs) next to Berga Bazārs. Along all the paths of the park’s labyrinth, open stalls are offering the products of artisans, jewelers, metalworkers, textile weavers, dressmakers, wood and bone carvers working with ancient Baltic motifs. A bit like the Tallinn fair, although somehow more rational, serious and reserved. Latvians are more German than Estonians.

In a tent set up on one of the wider paths, a craft workshop is teaching weaving, basket weaving and plasticine for children.

And of course, the market kitchens. At the entrance to the park, meat is being grilled on a stove and over open fire, potatoes cooked between hot stones, and cabbage stewed over embers. Both comers and goers sit down at long tables next to the kitchen. Excited seagulls are squawking in concert all around. The Latvians sweep the leftovers into a large, closed garbage tank, not caring about the seagull jumping on the top and his desires. I put the abundant leftovers of the knuckle on top of the tank, let him have a good day too.

On Sunday, at eight in the morning, we wake up to a brass band concert in Riga’s old town. We don’t know the Latvian anthem, but they seem like playing something like that. Then a mass of young people shouting, and then more music. Boy scouts? Demonstration? Political rally?

When we go down to the street around ten, the music and shouting are still going on. Then we see the first flags that look like church flags, and behind the flag bearer, children dressed in festive attire. A Catholic procession in a Lutheran town? But then more and more flag bearers come, with the names of towns and schools on their flags. And after the flag bearers, children or young people, not that much in national costumes, but rather in dresses based on them, with wreaths of flowers on their heads, and bouquets in their hands. They keep coming and coming, just as they have been for the previous two hours, without a break, from the main square, and continuing towards the Freedom Monument.

“What is it today, a national holiday?” we ask a spectator. “No, a choir meeting.” It happens every five years, so that every generation can experience it at least once. We were just lucky to come now. Latvians are not a smiling people, but here and now they fulfill their five-year smiling plan.

To enhance the folk identity, many marchers hold old Latvian runes attached to sticks, which we later see in every shop in the city on clothes, jewelry, mugs and souvenirs. Or a rattle – called, as we later learn, a trejsdeksnis –, with a few discs attached to the handle, and metal plates hanging from their rims. “What is this, does it have any symbolic meaning?” we ask a gothic-looking girl with black dress and make-up. “I don’t know, I don’t have much affinity for folk music. Ask me about Nirvana instead.”

Ten minutes from the three and a half hour parade

At noon, when the last marchers have left, and only flower petals remain on the square’s pavement, a beautiful young woman sits down opposite the House of the Blackheads, the formar company house of unmarried merchants, named after their patron saint, the black Saint Maurus, which – after the Germans bombed it, the Soviets bulldozed the rest, and then the Latvians faihtfully reconstructed it – is considered a symbol of Latvian rebirth. She unwraps a large, archaic instrument from soft textiles, a bandura, which has been a symbol of Ukrainian rebirth since Shevchenko, and begins to play it. Fascinated, we stay in front of her for an hour, listening to and sometimes filming her. She came from Nikolaev/Mykolaiv near Odessa, and the beautiful songs are well-known Ukrainian folk songs and chansons. I hope Irina can identify them.

“Ой під вишнею, під черешнею” (Тріо Мареничів)

“Ой у вишневому саду” (folk song)

“Місяць на небі, зіронькі сяють” (folk song)

“Закувала зозуленька в лузі”

“Я піду в далекі гори” (Володимир Івасюк)

“Рідна мати моя” (folk song)

“Ніч яка місячна” (folk song)

“Цвіте терен” (folk song)

The first victim

The Museum of Occupation in Riga – which is characteristically located on Riga’s main square, just as 20th-century terror plays a central role in Latvia’s history and identity – evokes with cruelly many photographs and documents the Russian, German and again Russian occupation of the country between 1940 and 1944, the extermination of the Jews, the deportation of Latvians and their conscription into the armies of both sides to then fight against each other, the escape of survivors, the struggle of forced laborers and prisoners of war in Germany and those taken to the Gulag, the emigration, the repression in Soviet Latvia, the executions, the destruction of villages and of Latvian agriculture, the twelve-year anti-Soviet partisan war and its cruel crushing. I don’t want to post any more pictures about this than this one, the first victim of the Soviet occupation of independent Latvia in 1940, the twenty-seven-year-old border guard Jānis Macītis, who was massacred along with his wife and young son by Soviet squads that attacked without a declaration of war, only to accuse Latvia the next day of violating the border and to demand the resignation of the government and the admission of the Red Army within 9 hours.

With such a history, it is no coincidence that Latvians know exactly which side to stand on and what to expect if their former oppressors prevail again.

Cuatrocientas toneladas de mapas secretos

Mientras paseábamos por Riga, nos topamos por casualidad con una tienda de mapas en la antigua galería Berga Bazārs. A primera vista, parecía simplemente una buena tienda, con una sólida oferta de mapas internacionales y guías de viaje.

Pero entonces descubrimos la estantería de mapas rusos, que parecían ofrecer detalles de mundos casi inexistentes. Birobidzhán, la región autónoma judía, el “anti-Israel” de Stalin a lo largo del Amur, donde hoy vive solo el uno por ciento de la población judía, pero aún se publica un periódico en yidis y el yidis sigue siendo obligatorio en la escuela primaria. Un mapa para rodear el lago Ladoga, donde llegar parece más difícil que ir a la Luna. Un atlas para los habitantes de Murmansk, aunque durante la Primera Guerra Mundial incluso los húngaros podían llegar fácilmente con billetes de tren gratuitos, solo que tenían que construir el ferrocarril primero.

Prokudin-Gorsky: Prisioneros de guerra del Imperio Austrohúngaro en la construcción del ferrocarril de Murmansk (“Murmelbahn”)

Lo mejor, sin embargo, viene después. Solo al llegar a la caja nos damos cuenta de las pilas de hojas de mapas detrás del mostrador, desde el suelo hasta el techo, y del cartel trilingüe que indica que se trata de mapas topográficos estrictamente secretos del Ejército Soviético.

Echamos un vistazo. Hungría está cubierta por cuatro hojas a escala 1:500.000, pero para las ciudades más grandes hay hojas a escala 1:25.000. Escrito en cirílico, los nombres de las ciudades suenan exactamente como los escuchaba de los veteranos mayores en toda la antigua Unión Soviética. Por curiosidad busco el antiguo aeropuerto militar soviético en Mátyásföld, que conocía aún en su época operativa, y que después de la retirada resultó estar bajo mando de oficiales georgianos. Sin embargo, el mapa detallado de Будапешт aún oculta el aeropuerto incluso a su propio personal: en su lugar se indican campos de cultivo.

El dependiente, disfrutando de nuestro entusiasmo, nos muestra también la hoja detallada de Washington, D.C., con el Pentágono y la Casa Blanca, donde cada instalación está codificada por colores según su función. Resulta que el Ejército Soviético había producido y actualizado mapas igualmente detallados de todas las partes del mundo que les interesaban, al menos cada diez años.

“¿Cómo consiguieron este material?", pregunto sin rodeos. El dependiente responde con entusiasmo: el propietario de la tienda trabajaba como civil en el Ejército Soviético en Letonia en 1992, durante la retirada, y se enteró de que el material secreto debía ser entregado a una fábrica de papel para su destrucción por orden superior. Inmediatamente comenzó a negociar con el oficial responsable para comprar al menos las hojas más interesantes. El ejército se negó al principio, pero una semana después pidió 14.000 dólares por el material. Nuestro hombre consiguió la suma –“no preguntes cómo”, añade el dependiente– y fue al almacén a recoger la mercancía. Sin embargo, los almacenistas eran demasiado perezosos para seleccionar las hojas solicitadas y le dijeron que se llevara todo. Cuatrocientas toneladas de hojas de mapas fueron transportadas en varios vagones de tren, y todavía hoy hay abundancia de cada una. Excepto de San Francisco, añade el dependiente, porque alguien descubrió la tienda allí y escribió un artículo; los locales compraron todas las hojas, y ahora incluso de Washington quedan pocas.

Como escena final, entra un grupo de seis o siete estadounidenses. Buscan la hoja de Carolina del Sur, la ciudad de Greenville. Cuando la reciben, se quedan boquiabiertos. «¡Oh my God, aquí está nuestra casa del lago!», grita una chica. «¡Aquí está nuestra iglesia!» Compran de inmediato dos copias. «¿No deberíamos llevarnos cuatro? ¿Cuántas más quedan?» «Setenta y una más.»

El líder del grupo explica que ayudan en un campamento scout local en Letonia; los demás es su primera vez, él ya ha estado varias. “¿Y cómo encontraron esta tienda?” “Un amigo estuvo aquí y me dijo que tenía que venir sí o sí – ¡OMG, qué material hay aquí!”

Es realmente asombroso, extraño y algo agobiante ver tan claramente con qué avidez el Ejército Soviético –y el Estado que lo controlaba– mantenía un registro de las partes del mundo que les interesaban. Un pequeño detalle psicológico del insaciable apetito de información del Estado ruso actual.

Solo por el souvenir, compramos la hoja húngara de 1989 que incluye Budapest (sí, incluso poco antes de la retirada todavía estaba actualizada), junto con una buena bibliografía: The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union secretly mapped the world, 2017. Solo al salir de la tienda me doy cuenta de que nunca comprobé cómo representaban, si es que lo hacían, el cuartel soviético en Hajmáskér y el campo de entrenamiento circundante en Bakony, donde entrené con tanques. Tendré que volver por eso.