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From Christianisation to Tsarist eraPage 1 of 13
From Christianisation to the tsarist era. Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius as mirrored by their castles, churches, townsmen’s buildings and universities At the height of the Middle Ages, from the 12th century onwards, the foundations were laid for the Europeanness of today’s Baltic States: a complex procedure that lasted centuries. It began with the frequently violent Christianisation of the country population, implemented by the Order of the Sword and – following the latter’s defeat by the Lithuanians – the Teutonic Knights, resulting in the assimilation of the eastern Baltic coast into the central European economic area of the Hanseatic League, which was also dominated by Germans. The Germans founded Riga in 1201, the Danish and the Germans founded Reval – today’s Tallinn – in 1219. Vilnius (German: Wilna, Polish: Wilno), on the other hand, had already been founded without help from the Germans; when exactly was unknown. In order that Vilnius might grow into a veritable city, Gediminas, grand duke of Lithuania, nevertheless called for immigrants from other European countries during the 1320s. All these procedures had little to do with nation-building processes of the sort to be seen in the 19th and 20th centuries; rather, it was a matter of Christianisation, trade, infrastructural development and cultivation of the land. Unlike Latvia and Estonia, who did not become independent European states before 1918, Lithuania can look back on a glorious past as one of the great powers of the late Middle Ages. It was able to hold its ground against attacks by the Teutonic Knights and, when its grand dukes eventually converted to Christianity (although they did not do so with finality and permanence until 1387 – later than all other European rulers), they thus de-legitimated any further ‘crusades’ on the part of the Order. Meanwhile, Lithuania was rapidly losing its political weight on account of its union with Poland and its still only loosely defined cultural identity. Poland, which had already been Christianised for some four hundred years and was closely integrated into Europe, penetrated Lithuania both intellectually and socially: Lithuanian aristocrats were soon to speak nothing but Polish. As the Germans had done in Latvia and Estonia before, the Poles became the dominant political and cultural power in Lithuania. Developments of the 18th century – initially the Nordic War; then the Partitioning of Poland – rendered the area of today’s Baltic countries as well as large parts of Poland under Russian rule. It has been since this period that a shared historical destiny has gradually developed, one which to some extent justifies our use of the phrase ‘the three Baltic States’ today, despite their many historical and linguistic differences. How are these developments visible in the cityscapes of the Baltic metropolises today? The major objects of study will be compared with each other in chronological order of their historical emergence.
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