Migrant modernists: The making of national architects in Lithuania in the 1930s and their survival strategies in the 1950s

Abstract

The new national states that emerged on the European map in 1918 following the collapse of the great European empires in the wake of World War I became enthusiastic participants in the race to modernise, hoping to keep pace with global trends and become more European in the process. Renewal was the central goal of many European cities. This was particularly so in the newly restored cities or those newly designated as administrative capitals such as Kaunas, which became the provisional capital of the Republic of Lithuania from 1919 to 1939. These cities faced similar challenges: ridding themselves of imperial pasts, architectural legacies and symbols, changing their urban environment, creating new political centres and constructing new government facilities. The question of national architects became similarly important. Through the lives of the modern architects who were compelled to change their citizenship or suffered exile, forced migration or genocide, we can study the effect of social and political change, and in particular political ruptures. This paper follows how architects, collectively as well as individually, developed as a modern group of socially engaged intellectuals in 1930s. It then considers how they reacted to political changes, such as the first communist occupation of Lithuania in 1940, the subsequent Nazi occupation in 1941, and the return of the Red Army in 1944, when most of the architects in private practice emigrated to the West. Finally, it illustrates how those architects who remained adapted to the new political rule in Soviet Lithuania in the 1950s.

Gender inequality in an “Equal” environment

“…The invisibility of women, as mentioned here, is also noticeable throughout Drėmaitė's (2020Drėmaitė's ( , 2019aDrėmaitė's ( , 2019b work on the history of architecture in Lithuania, where on the few occasions where women are mentioned, it is as the wife of someone. Thus, women have had a longstanding involvement in the design and creation of buildings, but their contribution has long been overlooked and their progress impeded because of patriarchal mechanisms in place.…”

“…In June 1940, the Soviets converted all government ministries into commissariats incorporating the design, planning and construction departments which existed within these former ministries. Architects in the private sector had to cease their work and were collectively forced into the State Planning Institutes (Drėmaitė, 2020).…”

“…In June 1940, the Soviets converted all government ministries into commissariats incorporating the design, planning and construction departments which existed within these former ministries. Architects in the private sector had to cease their work and were collectively forced into the State Planning Institutes (Drėmaitė, 2020). During the post‐World War II until the 1970s, women entered the architectural profession in both Lithuania and Eastern Europe in much greater numbers and were accorded more opportunities to design large‐scale public buildings than their female counterparts in Western Europe (Bartosova, 2018; Kalm, 2017; Pepchinski & Simon, 2017).…”

Modernist architects and the age of extremes in Eastern Europe, 1920-1950: Introduction

“…24 In particular, Marija Dremaite's article demonstrates how massive the effect of the ensuing ruptures was in Lithuania on specifical professional biographies and how closely the fate of architects and their identity was linked with the deep ruptures in the country. 25 For this reason, we must also look into the specific dynamics in each country, for example, the very different cases of Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Furthermore, it is essential to be equally careful about the different characters of caesura, such as the start of World War II and ensuing occupations, and the establishment of socialism after the war.…”