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| THE COAT OF ARMS AS A SIGN OF THE SELF Imants Lancmanis | |
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The Latvian visitor to the exhibition "Heraldry in Latvia from the 13th to the 21st century" may be perplexed by signs that are strange not only because they are unknown, but because they derive from another world, another time and a differing ethnic and social setting. A world of knights, nobles, bishops, Germans, Swedes, Russians, Poles, rulers, dukes, counts, barons, or at any rate - names with von in the middle. Only in the last room of the exhibition, reaching Latvia's national coat of arms and seeing the more or less familiar coats of arms of the towns, the viewer once again feels more secure, having arrived in a "friendly" setting. But from beginning to end, the exhibition tells of one and the same - of a system of insignia for signifying one's family, one's district or one's country.
From the earliest times, people have wished to express concepts through images. Writing, the alphabet, human communication through words and language existed as the most universal level of mutual understanding, while the language of symbols was a higher level of abstraction, having creative, artistic origins. Ancient Egypt is already replete with convention and symbolism. Egypt produced such beautiful examples of stylised beasts and birds that one wonders whether these are not already coats of arms. The eagle, drawn strictly frontally, with its head turned in an imperious profile and horizontally extended wings, the feathers rendered with a schematism resembling 20th century design - what a wonderfully pure stylisation! Even the Third Reich's symbol of power is no more effectively rendered; the difference is seen only in the shield with the swastika in the eagle's talons. However, neither the great eagles of Egypt and Rome, nor the monumental griffins of Assyria, nor the lilies of Arabic art, so similar to those later appearing in the arms of the kings of France, belong to heraldry. Only the 12th century, with its obsession with Crusades, brought the necessity of distinguishing the brightly coloured mass of fighters, thus provoking the birth of heraldry. Geometric colour fields, beasts and birds, and a variety of natural or artificial objects were painted on knights' shields, embroidered on their flags and dress and engraved on armour and weaponry, changing from adopted insignia into an inherited family crest. This was the coat of arms. Heralds also appeared straight away, to accompany the knights, reading and interpreting these signs, compiling volumes of designs and creating the terminology for describing coats of arms. Heraldry had emerged - a knowledge of the rules for creating, interpreting and using coats of arms. The ancient and unusual language of heraldry, this archaic monument of linguistics, has been preserved right up to the present day. Heraldry is the most abstract but also the most powerful system of self-identification. It requires submitting to some family tradition, seemingly epitomising and applying to oneself the merits of one's ancestors, at the same time serving as a reminder of obligations towards the family's honour and good name. At the time when heraldry emerged, the first heraldic signs were shown on the flag, later transferred to the shield. The flag is the oldest weapon for inspiration and self-inspiration, raised fluttering above people's heads, calling them to battle, exhorting them to valour and self-sacrifice. It has remained thus right up to the present day - it is enough to remember the role of the red-white-red flag at the time of the Latvian National Awakening. On 17 October 1903, a major heraldry exhibition opened at the Courland Province Museum in Jelgava. Baron Alexander von Rahden, Head of the Genealogy, Heraldry and Sphragistics Section of the Courland Society for Literature and Art, led an event unprecedented in the territory of Latvia, organising an exhibition of 3217 items. Nobles and citizens of Courland, scientific societies and the citizens of Riga contributed their heraldic treasures, of which there was no shortage at that time in Latvia. A similar effort is being undertaken exactly a century later. This is an overview of the losses and gains of the past century. One-and-a-half thousand heraldic items, arranged in six rooms. In view of all that Latvia has gone through over these past hundred years, one can say that the losses are not as great as might have been thought, particularly bearing in mind that the 20th century destroyed the living basis of heraldry in Latvia - the aristocracy and the wealthy bourgeoisie, this social setting crucial for the cultivation of coats of arms. But it turned out that much of the material shown in 1903 had survived the wars and social convulsions in Latvia in museums, archives, libraries and private collections, and much new and important heraldic material has also come to light. Of decisive importance was the rich contribution by the Knightage of Courland and Livland, which provided 23 certificates of nobility and armorial family trees, as well as private contributions from Germany, Sweden and Finland. The exhibition is not only a display of heraldic treasures, but also an attempt to educate Latvian society, which is virtually ignorant regarding heraldry. Heraldry has chanced to remain the last unexplored branch of the humanities in Latvia. All branches of research have, since the mid-19th century, developed their own Latvian terminology and have been studied as scientific disciplines, but heraldry has not been affected. At the present day, by no means all terms in heraldry have their Latvian equivalents. Thus, the exhibition is also intended as a textbook for those who wish to find out about the rules and terminology of heraldry, about the ways it has been utilised and about its history in Latvia. On view at the exhibition are many works on heraldry from abroad, which have brought the world knowledge of coats of arms since the 16th century. The knight identified himself with his family arms not only on the battlefield but also when, having taken off his armour, he signed a parchment and marked it with his seal. The seal bearing a coat of arms is still a potent concept, but in that distant age it was the only way of ensuring the authenticity of a document, although forging of documents was practiced at that time too. The seal serves not only for identification, it is also a personification. Although it was not forbidden to use the armorial seal of one's ancestors, usually every member of the family commissioned a new, specially-made seal. It was not only a question of period style, but also a matter of proving one's identity. With good reason, in the 18th century the initials were also included next to the arms. Armorial seals have changed their overall appearance too over the centuries, developing from heavy iron blocks into elegant breloques and expensive gold seal-rings, where the arms are engraved in semi-precious stone, most commonly carnelian. Along with Christianity, heraldry was brought to Latvia by Western civilisation. The exhibition includes hundreds of seal impressions, and quite a number of actual seals. Only in the 14th and 15th century did the lords of the land - the Archbishop of Riga and the Master of the Livonian Order - begin to supplement the church symbols with their family arms. The German knights who, as members of the Livonian Order, were forced to subordinate their family arms to the cross of the order, did retain their arms and after the collapse of the order, when they became a landowning nobility, used them as extensively as in the West. The nobles of Courland and Livland, referring to themselves as the "knightage", thus tracing back the origins of their estate to the time of the Livonian Order, formed a very closed body that was not only concerned to maintain the purity of its ranks, but also continued heraldic traditions. The Knightage of Courland was the first in Europe to introduce, already in 1620, a system for proving one's nobility, the so-called Knightly College, that had to evaluate a candidate's noble origins. For this purpose, one had to submit an armorial family tree, in which one's ancestors were indicated not only by name, but also by their arms. This was a great spur to learning about local heraldry. The Courland armorial family trees, and the armorials (volumes depicting the arms) in manuscript form, created for the needs of the Knightly College, are widely represented in the exhibition. The same Knightage of Courland which established the Knightly College in 1620 still exists in the 21st century and still owns the same material that has been accumulating in its archive since the nobles of Courland began to identify themselves as a collective body. The exhibition shows the armorial family tree of Christopher von Fircks, Chancellor of Courland, painted on parchment and submitted at a meeting of the Knightly College in 1631. The pedigree of the ancestors of Martin von Hoyningen-Huene, Court Marshall of Duke Wilhelm of Courland, was painted on canvas in 1646 and is the only such large format painting preserved and still in the possession of the family. The armorial family tree (depicting the families as branching from an ancestor at the root of the tree) and the pedigree (with the opposite arrangement of the family tree, the ancestors being ranged on the branches of the tree) usually show 16 ancestral arms in the paternal line and 16 in the maternal line, a total of four generations. This was a form of proving one's noble birth, earlier required for admission to knightly orders, for attaining the rank of army officer or for purchasing an estate in those countries where these were the privileges of the nobility. In order to compile an armorial family tree, one had to know the appearance of the arms of each family. Particularly in Courland in the 17th and 18th century, handwritten and drawn armorials were produced on several occasions, but none of these could encompass the total scope of local heraldry. Only Johann Eberhard Neimbts, Secretary of the Ducal Archive, succeeded in doing this, and in 1793 he published a Courland armorial. The exhibition reflects his extensive research, with albums of sketches, notes and drafts, which, together with many other armorials in manuscript form, were exhibited already in 1903. However, the development of heraldry in a monarchic world order was not quite autonomous. Rulers have always retained for themselves the right to have their say, making the award of nobility, titles and arms as their sphere of activity, which, moreover, was financially lucrative. It would be an overstatement to say that in the 18th century at the court of the Holy Roman Empire in Vienna noble titles could be purchased as simply as in the market, but it is undeniable that ambitious merchants, including those of Riga and Liepāja, had little trouble proving their descent "from honourable parents", which together with real or imagined social merits and a handsome sum of money for preparing the certificate, brought the longed-for addition of the particle von to the surname. The exhibition shows several tens of certificates of nobility and arms, issued by rulers in Europe, from the State Historical Archives in Riga and the Archives of the Courland Knightage in Marburg. The Russian Tsars Paul I and Nicholas I bestowed the titles of countess and princess, along with the appropriate arms, on the owner of Mežotne Estate Charlotte von Lieven; Duke Peter of Courland obtained the certificate of a Count of the Holy Roman Empire for his father-in-law Johann Friedrich von Medem; Kaiser Carl V granted nobility to the Zimmermann brothers, citizens of Riga; Louis XVIII of France awarded the title of Count to Andreas von Königsfels, who had welcomed him at Blankenfelde Estate during his time of exile. All this speaks to the viewer from the parchments at the exhibition, bound in their velvet covers and confirmed by the rulers' signatures and their great wax seals. When coats of arms no longer adorned shields on the battlefield, and when knightly tournaments had also gone out of fashion along with their complicated heraldic framework, coats of arms entered the everyday setting. In the Gothic Era, there was already an abundance of arms all around, underfoot and overhead, since heraldic covers, rugs and paintings on walls and ceilings were often used for interior decoration. But the Renaissance and Baroque Era, which extolled individual self-assertion and tended to distance the bearer of the arms from the family, extolling personal achievement, brought heraldry into every aspect of life, every event and decoration. During the Baroque Era, a member of the nobility could not be born, marry, or die without the appropriate heraldic elements. And this was not only in the form of coats of arms, whether on the infant's blanket or the coffin lid. Treated in literature was the subject matter of the arms, the figures and the symbolism, played on wonderfully in countless odes, dedications and obituaries. The Catholic Bishop of Cēsis, Otto von Schenking, belonging to a Courland family, could read in a panegyric from 1597 an interpretation of the three horns on his family arms: one belonged to the bishop as shepherd, calling together the sheep with his horn, the second horn was intended for the protector of the house of God and the third suited the bishop as a huntsman who blows the horn, driving his foray into the net of Christ. Baroque heraldry is overflowing with poetically philosophical interpretations of arms, for the most part borrowed from emblematics and having little in common with heraldry itself. The arms adorned the whole frame of one's life, each item of everyday use. With furniture, the arms could be placed on the gable or the door of the wardrobe, chests were provided with the arms of the married couple, and especially dignified was a carved coat of arms surmounting the back of a chair. The arms were painted on porcelain vessels, engraved on silver, copper and pewter vessels and cutlery, included in ex-libris book plates and could be impressed in relief on book covers, embroidered and depicted on carriage doors and servants' livery. Heraldry has always accompanied architecture. The owner's arms appeared on the house portal or gable, they could be carved in stone or painted, or cast in plaster, and a weather vane decorated with a coat of arms could be placed on the roof. The exhibition shows a large coat of arms of the city of Riga, deftly carved in 1779 by Riga sculptor Johann Georg Haberkorn for the gable of Lāde Estate, a property belonging to the city. In 1936, the arms ended up in the Riga City History Museum. There were even greater possibilities for using coats of arms in interior decoration. They might appear on walls and ceilings, on stoves and fireplaces, and might be shown in stained glass, inlaid work and door fittings. Churches offered a wide field for artistic representation of coats of arms. Altars, pulpits, pews, organs, candelabras, candlesticks and Communion ware, in other words, every object donated to a church, was usually marked with the arms of the donor, or, as one would say today, the sponsor. Added to this was the benefit to the church from the developed traditions of burial and commemoration of the dead. The funeral itself was replete with heraldry - the funeral cortege of a noble was preceded by flags with the arms of the deceased and the ancestors; the arms were placed on the coffin and adorned the tombstone; and a coat of arms carved in wood was hung on the wall to preserve the memory of the deceased. For the purposes of the exhibition, woodcarvings of arms were taken from the walls of the Dom and St Peter's Church. The former is the source of a fine work in Mannerist style, the epitaph of David von Wiecken, and a Baroque memorial to Johann Hinrichs (died 1746), while the latter provided the epitaph of Riga Town Councillor Adam Hinrich Schwarz (died 1762), a virtuoso carving in Rococo style. Coffin decorations worked in various metals also became surprisingly elaborate in the 18th century, the main element again being the arms of the deceased. The last room of the exhibition is devoted to the heraldic symbolism of the Republic of Latvia: the national coat of arms, the arms of the towns, the counties and districts, and parish heraldry. When the new state of Latvia came into being, it faced the same question as many other states emerging on the ruins of former monarchies. Should something completely new be created, based on national symbols, rejecting all that which many regarded as foreign and un-Latvian, or should historical tradition be observed? Latvia had never had its own national aristocracy, and so, with the exception of a few families of ķoniņi (former Couronian rulers), there were no Latvian family arms. The Latvian bourgeoisie, developing in the 19th century, showed no interest in arms, seeing them, not without reason, as foreign elements. The exceptions were the Latvian student corps, which followed international traditions, also in the choice of their insignia. The idea of the Latvian national coat of arms went through several stages of development. The first national arms, confirmed on 6 December 1918, were designed by sculptor Burhards Dzenis and fully reflected the national symbols that, through the designs of Ansis Cîrulis, had been introduced already during the First World War in the symbolism of the Latvian Riflemen. The rising, radiant sun, with the letter L at centre and three stars, served for a few years as the country's symbol, but its incongruity with heraldic principles was evident. On 15 June 1921, the Constitutional Assembly adopted a new coat of arms, which expressed a clear wish to follow European tradition. Of the previous symbols, the rising sun was retained, augmented with historical heraldic figures - the red lion represented the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, while the silver griffin denoted Livonia and Lettgallia. The beautiful stylisation of the arms is the work of Professor Rihards Zariņš, although the composition was based on the ideas of graphic artist Vilis Krūmiņš. The new coat of arms was rejected by a large section of society, since not everyone could accept the "foreign" heraldic beasts. The press of the day spoke out virulently against the use of symbols referring to the states that had once existed in the territory of Latvia. However, the exhibition reveals how deeply the national coat of arms has taken root in national consciousness, so that it has become identified with the Latvian state itself, how it has been loved and extolled, used in everyday life for decorating interiors, art and jewellery. Countless five-lats silver coins were transformed into brooches, featuring either the profile of the Mother Latvia figure "Milda" or equally the great national coat of arms on the reverse. A unique, touchingly naïve representation of the national arms on a pottery vase by Paulāns has been provided for the exhibition by the Latgale Cultural Museum. The exhibition shows a stirring example of the national coat of arms, joining like a symbolic bridge the two periods of independent Latvia. This is the large coloured lithograph of the national arms issued from October 1921 by the State Stationary Office, for use in decorating state and public buildings. After 17 June 1940, a worker at the printing press cut the final sheet into small pieces in order to remove it from the workplace hidden in a book. In 1990, the pieces were donated to the Latvian History Museum, where they were restored and fitted together again. In a similar way, the whole idea of the reborn Latvia was fitted together piece by piece during the Third National Awakening. The national coat of arms, along with the flag and anthem, became the symbols of freedom, and the need for them was so deeply-felt that the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic ended its existence, having already regained the arms, the flag and the anthem of independent Latvia. City arms are known in the territory of Latvia since the 13th century. The seal of the city of Riga, first seen on a document from 1225, already shows the heraldic elements‑- the gate tower, the cross and the keys - later included in the design of the city arms still in use today. Up to the First World War, there were 24 towns in the present territory of Latvia with their own arms. The Heraldry Committee, established in 1923, had by 1938 confirmed a total of 60 town arms. From 1989, the civic arms from the time of the Republic of Latvia were restored. During this time, another 23 coats of arms have been created for new towns. Over the past five years, parish arms have been developed, and now more than 60 of these small administrative units, which will not be in existence for much longer, have their own arms. A small number of personal and family arms have also been created in recent years in Latvia. Time will tell whether these will remain as exceptional cases, or whether Latvia will join the traditions of other European peoples in this regard too. | |
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