Young Latvians - Leaders

Leaders

Valdemārs is seen as the spiritual father of the Awakening. With Alunāns, he led student gatherings while at Tartu and advocated the study of folklore and the founding of marine academies to turn the Latvians and Estonians into seafaring peoples. Krišjānis Barons began collecting dainas under Valdemārs' direct influence, and in 1862 Valdemārs, Alunāns and Barons collaborated in St. Petersburg to publish Pēterburgas Avīzes. The most radical newspaper hitherto published in Latvian, it was closed by the authorities in 1865. From 1867 to 1873, Atis Kronvalds (often known as Kronvaldu Atis) renewed the "Latvian evenings" begun by Valdemārs at Tartu. His Nationale Bestrebungen (1872) can be seen as the manifesto of the Young Latvians. Two of their older colleagues included Kaspars Biezbārdis, the first ethnic Latvian philologist, who helped draft petitions to the tsar on the harsh conditions among the Latvian peasantry (for which he was exiled to Kaluga in 1863), and Andrejs Spāģis, the first writer to draw western European attention to the Baltic problem. Fricis Brīvzemnieks (Treuland) is considered the father of Latvian folkloristics; Barons later made the collection of dainas his life's work. The poet Auseklis (the nom de plume of Krogzemju Mikus), in the diplomat and scholar Arnolds Spekke's words, represented "the romantic and mystic search for the nation's soul." The Young Latvian Andrejs Pumpurs later penned the national epic Lāčplēsis, "The Bear Slayer."