The Keys ep47 Who built the Latvian state?
Soon after the proclamation of Latvia, in 1924, its founders created a yet unseen, new cultural institution – the Open-Air Museum. It was one of the first museums of this kind in Europe. Already then the architects of the new state’s cultural environment saw that the traditional, ethnographic rural way of life was vanishing and sought to preserve it. In this episode we will explore the creation of the museum from the perspective of the family roots of the first Latvian statesmen. Only a few members of the People’s Council (the first legislative institution of Latvia) and the first cabinet were born in Riga or another city. The majority came from countryside. So, in the Open-Air Museum they preserved their own roots: Latvia, as it had been just recently and from which they came. The Open-Air Museum became the source of understanding Latvian identity and a messenger for the future generations.
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