Opening of Pauls Daija Monograph "Mediators of Enlightenment"

The National Library of Latvia (NLL) invites you to the opening of Pauls Daija book "Enlightenment Mediators: Baltic German Pastors in Latvian Writing. 1815–1848" on June 3rd of this year at 5:00 PM in the NLL choir (11th floor).

The monograph by Pauls Daija, the head of research and leading researcher at the Latvian National Library, is dedicated to the history of bookselling and provides an insight into one of the most rarely studied and mysterious eras in Latvian literary culture – the first half of the 19th century. At that time, the pinnacles of the Enlightenment period – the works of Gothard Friedrich Stender and Garlib Merķelis – had already become a thing of the past. The New Latvian movement, on the other hand, was still ahead. Pauls Daija takes readers to an intermediate stage between these events – the Biedermeier world, shrouded in apparent peace. He reveals how quietly creative work took place there, which gradually created cracks in the Baltic social and cultural systems, paving the way for the Latvian national breakthrough in the subsequent 19th century.

The author focuses on the Baltic German pastors, often eccentric pathfinders who formed the foundations of Latvian literary culture. Their work intertwined insurmountable contradictions in the attitude towards Latvian emancipation and the goals of the Enlightenment. Inspired by contemporary research on the Enlightenment in Germany and reinterpreting 19th-century sources, often for the first time, Daija describes not only the history of bookmaking, but also illuminates the cultural Paradoxes of important epochs in the fractures.

Dr. philol. Pauls Daija has published articles and participated in research projects on the Age of Enlightenment in the Baltics, the history of Latvian literature in the 18th–19th centuries, and the cultural heritage of the Baltic Germans. Daija is the author of the monographs "Enlightenment and Cultural Transmission. The Creation of Latvian Secular Literature" (2013) and "Literary History and Popular Enlightenment in Latvian Culture" (2017), and has also compiled the book "A New History of Latvian Literature: the Long Nineteenth Century" (2022) with Benedikts Kalnačs.

Scientific reviewers: Dr. philol. Māra Grudule and Dr. habil. philol. Benedikts Kalnačs.

Design: Inese Hofmane.

Photo: Reinis Hofmanis.

Literary editor: Sigita Kušnere.

The book is printed in the Jelgava printing house.

The publication will be available for purchase from the opening day at the LNB store "Draugu telpa" and eveikals.lnb.lv. The monograph was prepared and published in the project "Book and Society in Latvia: European Dimension and Cultural Changes" (LZP-2023/1-0263). It was published with the support of the program "Latvian Book 500" funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia.