"Bastionas nuo šiaurės vėtrų": senienų užuovėjoje

ENIn his letter to the historian Julian Bartoszewicz (1821-1870) written in 1867, Eustachy Tyszkiewicz (1814-1873) recalled the Vilnius Museum of Antiquities and wrote with sadness and nostalgia that it was “a bastion that protected our language and precious past from north winds” (bastion, strzegący od wichrów północnych nasz język i drogą przeszłość). With these words Tyszkiewicz also expressed the main idea of the project of the Vilnius Museum of Antiquities and the Vilnius Temporary Archaeological Commission, which he created and developed. It was probably not by accident that Tyszkiewicz chose to implement this idea by means of an institution that was new in Lithuania at that time - the Museum, which was called The Lithuanian Museum among a circle of friends. In the country where the imperial administration closed Vilnius University and imposed other restrictions on the country’s culture and education after the uprising of 1830-1831, it was the most suitable means of fostering society’s cultural memory, historical self-consciousness and identity. To Tyszkiewicz and his like-minded friends and colleagues, the museum was not only a place for public demonstration of the country’s heritage with the aim to satisfy society’s interest or curiosity.They saw the museum as a place where the common narrative of the “precious past” was built by actively involving the residents in the work of accumulation and dispersion of the region’s antiquities. Thus, the Vilnius Museum of Antiquities became an institution that constructed, legitimised and standardised the meanings of the heritage, which were relevant and common for Lithuanian society. Therefore, while exploring the region’s cultural and historical heritage accumulated and represented by the Vilnius Museum of Antiquities, we can also reconstruct the meanings of the collective memory created by Lithuanian society in the 19th century with the help of the museum’s historical narratives and images of cultural identity. The latter are exclusively based on the history and tradition of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and include four main elements of historical narrative: pre-Christian Lithuania, the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the most prominent national heroes of the past and the halo of noble self-respect and patriotism that surrounded all of them. [From the publication]