Spalvoti Arnoldo Zweigo Vilniaus karoliai

ENDuring the World War I, Arnold Zweig, the German writer of the Jewish background, worked as a censor in the Press Department of the German Army Headquarters in Kaunas, and was a co-author in the newspaper Kownoer Zeitung. In 1917, he visited Vilnius and later wrote the text the Necklace of Vilnius, which in 1914 was published in the Menorah magazine, Berlin. Based on this case, the article analyses the relationship between an image and text - how Zweig constructed his verbal narrative on visual Vilnius, how this narration was influenced by the cultural and linguistic tradition, and the ideology of the Great War. The author discussed four architectural monuments of Vilnius: St. Ann’s Church, the Bernardine Church, the Great Synagogue and the Gate of Dawn with the miraculous icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary, naming each of them as a pearl of a certain colour. Zweig described the influence of the shape of buildings made on the viewer through visual associations with the redness of blood, the natural timber, viridity of the wall, the golden shining of the icon. And, finally, the writer interpreted the architecture of Vilnius’ shrines through religious imagery, links to the faith, which, according to Zweig, helped the residents of this multi-confessional city to survive the dreadfulness of war and never lose hope.Thus, architecture to this German author was a pretext to speak about the most important things to him - common human things, faith and local, as well as global spiritual values. But, the motive of the necklace as a piece of woman’s jewellery related to Vilnius also has another connotation. The German texts on Vilnius of the period of the World War I often treats this city as a woman, a being of “the weaker sex”, and presents its history as a narrative with political, ideological, gender or even sexist interpretation: “the bridegrooms from the East (Russia) and the West (Germany) have fought for the rich queen Wilna; and the Eastern groom abused her for a long time, but finally the groom came from the West and delivered her." Similar rhetoric, typical to the German literature about Vilnius of the World War I, could also be noticed in the text by Arnold Zweig dedicated to his memories ofVilnius and its architectural monuments. [From the publication]