Culture
The first book in Lithuanian, prepared by Martynas Mažvydas, was printed in Königsberg in 1547, while the first Lithuanian grammar, Daniel Klein's Grammatica Litvanica, was printed there in 1653.
Lithuania Minor was the home of Kristijonas Donelaitis, pastor and poet and author of The Seasons, which mark the beginning of Lithuanian literature. The Seasons gave vivid depiction of the everyday life of Prussian Lithuanian country.
Lithuania Minor was an important center for Lithuanian culture, which was persecuted in Russian Empire occupied Lithuania proper. That territory had been slowly Polonized when being part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and was heavily Russificied while part of the Russian Empire, especially in the second half of the 19th century. During the ban on Lithuanian printing in Russia from 1864 until 1904, Lithuanian books were printed in East Prussian towns such as Tilsit, Ragnit, Memel, and Königsberg, and smuggled to Russia by knygnešiai. The first Lithuanian language periodicals appeared during the period in Lithuania Minor, such as Auszra, edited by Jonas Basanavičius, succeeded by Varpas by Vincas Kudirka. They had contributed greatly to the Lithuanian national revival of the 19th century.
Read more about this topic: Lithuania Minor
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,—not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“The aggregate of all knowledge has not yet become culture in us. Rather it would seem as if, with the progressive scientific penetration and dissection of reality, the foundations of our thinking grow ever more precarious and unstable.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)