Presentation of the Activities Carried out by the Georg Eckert Institute Concerning the Essay for WP

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Presentation of the Activities Carried out by the
Georg Eckert Institute Concerning the Essay for
WP 4 The return of the Baltic capitals to
Europe. An approach to the Baltic Region from the
perspective of HisTourism

• (Robert Maier / Andreas Fülberth)

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The Baltic Region as a typical destination of
HisTourism

• The essay will summarize Baltic history such as
  it seems to be reflected in the buildings usually
  noticed by tourists when they are visiting
  Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius.
• In the case of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,
  many travellers who can modernly spoken be
  characterized as "HisTourists" do not see more
  than the capitals of these countries.
• At the same time, the attempts of these
  countries to underline their 'Westernization' are
  strongly concentrated on the capitals.

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• The importance of buildings showing similarities
  with buildings in Western Europe can hardly be
  over-estimated in this context.
• However, the (His-)tourist first of all tends to
  compare the buildings of Tallinn, Riga and
  Vilnius with each other - for example, the
  cathedral of one of the cities with the
  cathedrals of the other two cities (as well as,
  accordingly, castles with castles, fortifications
  with fortifications and so on).
• This is precisely what our paper will do.

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As to the general character of our essay

• It is intended not to describe architecture in a
  manner that would be interesting mainly for an
  art historian, but to apply perspectives which
  are typical of "HisTourism". This kind of
  focussing historical circumstances and changes
  will finally include (or even stress!) the
  origins of Western influences - or, as one might
  put it, the 'European dimension' - within the
  architecture of the buildings dealt with.

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Main features of Baltic history to be stressed
in our essay

• Initially, the essay accentuates that the
  foundations of the Europeanness of the Baltic
  Region have already been laid in the 13th, 14th
  and 15th centuries although the northern part
  of that region had to wait for political
  independence until 1918 and although the southern
  part, Lithuania, has been the last stronghold of
  paganism in Europe until 1386. The essay will
  show how all these peculiarities are mirrored in
  buildings, because architecture is the sphere by
  which a (His-)tourist obtains historical
  background information.

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Types of buildings to be portrayed and compared
with each other

• Not only castles, churches, town halls,
  monasteries and so on will be portrayed in this
  context, but also, for example, universities The
  different origins of the universities of Vilnius,
  Riga and Tallinn the first one being successor
  to a Jesuit College founded at the end of the
  16th century, the second one being successor to a
  polytechnic founded in the second half of the
  19th century and the third one being successor to
  a pedagogic high school founded under Soviet rule
  underline the diversity of traditions to be
  found in the capitals of the Baltic Region and to
  be admired by the (His-)tourist.