The Birth and Development of the Baltic National Church History Writing

Riho Altnurme, Jaakko Olavi Antila and Jouko Talonen

The Birth and Development
of the Baltic National
Church History Writing

Berlin · Bruxelles · Chennai · Lausanne · New York · Oxford

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Altnurme, Riho, 1969- author | Antila, Jaakko Olavi author | Talonen, Jouko author

Title: The birth and development of the Baltic national church history writing / Riho Altnurme, Jaakko Olavi Antila and Jouko Talonen.

Description: NewYork; Bern: Peter Lang, [2025] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2025015817 (print) | LCCN 2025015818 (ebook) | ISBN 9783631928516 hardcover | ISBN 9783631938744 ebook | ISBN 9783631938751 epub

Subjects: LCSH: Established churches--Baltic States--Historiography | Baltic States--Church history--Historiography

Classification: LCC BR937.B3 A48 2025 (print) | LCC BR937.B3 (ebook) | DDC 274.79/082--dc23/eng/20250514

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025015817

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2025015818

The cover images:

Olaf Sild, Photo: Heinrich Riedel. University of Tartu Library collection, Fo Alb.2:11.

Professor Ludvigs Adamovičs. Photo: Jouko Talonen Research Archives (Vantaa, FI).

Dr Vilius Gaigalaitis. Photo: Adomas Kliučinskis, Lietuvos albumas (1921) / Wikimedia Commons.

ISBN 978-3-631-92851-6 (Print)

ISBN 978-3-631-93874-4 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-3-631-93875-1 (ePUB)

DOI 10.3726/b22959

© 2025 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne (Switzerland)

Published by Peter Lang GmbH, Berlin (Germany)

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Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Table

Preface

Chapter 1 Earlier Baltic church history writing

Chapter 2 Olaf Sild – Estonian church historian

Chapter 3 Ludvigs Adamovičs as a Latvian church historian

Chapter 4 Vilius Gaigalaitis – Finding Protestant perspectives on the history of Lithuania in relation to Germany, Poland, Russia and the northern Baltic Sea Region, 1904–1933

Summary

Sources and bibliography

Index of names

List of Figures

Figure 1: Carl L. Tetsch (1708–71) was a significant expert on the church history of Courland at the end of the eighteenth century. His research laid the foundation for research on the history of the region. This is the cover of his book ‘Curländischer Kirchen-Geschichte, 2. Theil’ (1768)

Figure 2: Wilhelm Storost (pseudonym Vydūnas, 1868–1953) was one of the first authors to integrate the history of Prussian Lithuania into the historical narrative of Lithuania Proper

Figure 3: Olaf Sild (1880–1944), professor of historical theology. 1920s–30s

Figure 4: The Faculty of Theology of the University of Tartu assembly in 1929

Figure 5: Teaching staff of the University of Tartu Faculty of Theology on 18 October 1939

Figure 6: Professor Ludvigs Adamovičs (1884–1942) was an exceptionally energetic researcher and socio-cultural influencer between the world wars in Latvia

Figure 7: The session of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Latvia in 1929

Figure 8: Herrnhutian prayer-house in Veclaicene near Valka in 1929

Figure 9: Archiv der Brüder-Unität (ABU) in Herrnhut

Figure 10: Dr Vilius Gaigalaitis (Wilhelm Gaigalat, 1870–1945) taught in the Faculty of Evangelical Theology at the University of Lithuania, Kaunas, 1925–36

Figure 11: Professor Aleksander (Alexander) Brückner (1856–1939), a famous Polish scholar of Slavistics, philology and history of literature was the main target of Wilhelm Gaigalat’s criticism in 1917

Figure 12: In 1933, Vilius Gaigalaitis published a booklet about Gustavus Adolphus and his role in the Thirty Years’ War. For Gaigalaitis, Gustavus Adolphus’ personality made it possible to slightly break away from the problematic relationship with Germany and orient towards other parts of the Baltic Sea Region

List of Table

Table 1: Library of the Cabinet of Christian Archaeology 1922–38

Preface

The German historian Richard Fester (1860–1945) declared the merging of church history with general history at the International Conference of Historians in Berlin in 1908. The background to this assessment was the boom in historical research that had lasted for over a century. The study of church history had also established itself as a historical field of study since the eighteenth century. It had separated itself from the patronage of the church and developed into part of historical research based on sources. The history of the Christian Church, at least in principle, had to be studied impartially, critically and detached from religious sympathies or antipathies.¹

In 1934, Walter Nigg (1903–88), an expert in the history of the writing of church history, stated that the field of research had reached its peak. It had finally turned into profane history after passing through its mystical, confessional, spiritualist, pragmatic, romantic and idealistic phase. Kauko Pirinen (1915–99), a recognised Finnish church history researcher, however, reminded us in 1983 that the prominent church history writers of the nineteenth century were also prisoners of the developments of their time. They were strongly committed to the cultural optimism characteristic of the time, and their understanding of Christianity was also related to this thinking.²

In any case, the study of modern church history essentially still involves strong emphasis on going into original sources and, in principle, striving for an objective assessment of the church’s past. At the same time, researchers in the field must take into account the special quality of their research object, the Christian Church, which has its own internal world and conceptualisation. In this respect, church history is a ‘servant of two masters’ because it is both a historical and a theological field of study.

As already stated above, one of the most significant experts in the history of church history research in the twentieth century was Walter Nigg, whose work Kirchengeschichtsschreibung: Grundzüge ihrer historischen Entwicklung was published in 1934.³ Historiographical research has also progressed in recent decades. Many researchers have published studies on individual researchers of church history, in which the subject of research has been the role of the person in question as a researcher, his or her scientific production, methods and philosophy of history. Such studies have been published in several countries.⁴

An important perspective on the historical development of church history research is the national interpretation of church history that has emerged in various countries. It gained momentum from the birth of nation states and the spread of the idea of nationality in the nineteenth century. After the First World War, the birth of new independent states also promoted national church history research and interpretation. At the same time, it is worth remembering that the Christian Church, the object of research, is basically – and always has been – a universal community that crosses national borders.

The independence of the Baltic countries in the final stages of the First World War promoted the countries’ national culture and national academic practice. The roots of the writing of national church history in these countries go back to the national awakening of the nineteenth century, but independence strongly promoted this national orientation. Especially in Estonia and Latvia, there was an increasing desire to distance oneself from the old Baltic German tradition, which had had cultural hegemony in the region. Lithuania’s setting was, of course, more diverse due to historical factors, but there, too, the national, that is, Lithuanian, emphasis rose more and more to the surface.

In this work, we examine the birth and development of the national church history of the Baltic countries in the period that begins at the end of the nineteenth century and ends with the Second World War. In particular, we pay attention to the interwar period, 1918–40. This period was exceptionally important in the socio-economic, political and cultural development of the Baltic countries. Up to now, the topic has been discussed mostly in terms of individual countries, but in this work, the perspective is broader. Along with Estonia and Latvia, the emerging Protestant historiography of Lithuania is examined as a part of this whole, and the wider Baltic Sea Region is also taken into account.

For background, we create brief overviews of the earlier writing of church history in the current Baltic Region. After that, we describe the life, activities, scientific production and academic, social and ecclesiastical influence of three prominent Baltic church history researchers in their own countries. The research subjects in question are Professors Olaf Sild (1880–1944) (Estonia), Ludvigs Adamovičs (1884–1942) (Latvia) and Vilius Gaigalaitis (Wilhelm Gaigalat, 1870–1945) (Lithuania). We examine the rise of the national church history writing of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania through the life work of these three influential persons. In this context, all the target persons, including the case of Lithuania, specifically represent the Protestant religious heritage. They partly differed from each other both in their research orientation and in the focus of their life work, but they made a substantial contribution to the teaching of evangelical theology at the national universities of each country. All of them can be considered creators or at least strong developers of the national Protestant church history writing in their own country and within their own language area. The ‘red thread’ of our work that connects the research on these three influential figures is not primarily the fact that they were people of much the same era and lived through the same historical course of events. They were scholars and interpreters of history and church history, whose life stages and careers reflected the formation of a national ethos.