47 Facts About Eduards Volters

Eduards Volters was a linguist, ethnographer, archaeologist who studied the Baltic languages and culture.

Eduards Volters was a long-time professor at the Saint Petersburg University and Vytautas Magnus University.

Eduards Volters supported and encouraged Lithuanian and Latvian students and joined their cultural activities.

In 1918, Eduards Volters moved to Vilnius and started organizing the Central Library of Lithuania.

Eduards Volters established and headed the Central Library, was director of the Kaunas City Museum, and taught various courses at the Vytautas Magnus University.

Eduards Volters was a prolific writer and authored more than 400 articles in Lithuanian, Latvian, German, Russian, though much or his collected material remains unpublished.

Eduards Volters prepared and published methodologies and instructions on how to collect ethnographic data to preserve accuracy and authenticity.

Eduards Volters's nationality is ambiguous and there is no consensus whether he should be considered German, Latvian, or Lithuanian.

Eduards Volters studied linguistics and Slavic languages at the Leipzig University and Dorpat University and defended his master's thesis at the Kharkiv University in 1883.

Eduards Volters supported Lithuanian and Latvian students, including Pranas Vaicaitis, Povilas Visinskis, Kazimieras Buga, Antanas Smetona, Rainis, Peteris Smits.

Eduards Volters had a reputation as a lenient censor who allowed patriotic and historical plays that glorified episodes from the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania but was stricter on any commentary related to social inequality.

Eduards Volters was a member of the Lithuanian Literary Society and the Lithuanian Scientific Society and gifted them 1,037 and 1,337 books, respectively.

In November 1918, Eduards Volters traveled to Germany and Austria-Hungary to purchase Polish books for the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Eduards Volters established the Central Library and headed it until 1922.

Eduards Volters then became director of the Kaunas City Museum.

Eduards Volters taught at the Higher Courses and headed its humanities section.

Eduards Volters was one of the key figures working to transform the courses into the University of Lithuania in 1922.

Eduards Volters headed the archaeology section and taught various courses on archaeology, numismatics, Baltic prehistory, philology of Latvian, German, Bulgarian, Old Church Slavonic.

Eduards Volters retired in 1934 and devoted his time to writing memoirs and articles on history.

Eduards Volters died on 14 December 1941 and was buried in the Lutheran corner of the old Kaunas city cemetery.

Eduards Volters's grave was destroyed when the cemetery was turned into the present-day Ramybe Park.

At the time, Eduards Volters believed that both Latvian and Lithuanian were dying languages and cultures that should be studied but not necessarily encouraged or preserved.

In 1887, Eduards Volters translated into Lithuanian and prepared for publication Eastern Orthodox liturgy of John Chrysostom in the Cyrillic script.

Eduards Volters began treating Lithuanians not as an object of academic study, but as a living nation with aspirations for the future.

Eduards Volters became active participant in Lithuanian cultural activities in Saint Petersburg by helping Lithuanian students, organizing amateur theater performances, sharing illegal Lithuanian publications, etc.

Eduards Volters publicly spoke out against the press ban, including a presentation to the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1887 and an article about the Sietynas case published in Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti in 1897.

Eduards Volters published examples of folklore in Vilensky Vestnik and in publications of the Imperial Geographical Society.

Eduards Volters edited archaeological and ethnographic articles published in a statistical almanac by the Kovno Governorate.

Eduards Volters had similar information collected about Kovno and Vilna Governorates, but the information was not published and was lost.

In 2012,44 recordings by Eduards Volters were restored, transcribed, and published on a CD by the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore.

In 1884, at the Vilnius Public Library, Eduards Volters found a copy of the Catechism, or Education Obligatory to Every Christian by Mikalojus Dauksa, the first Lithuanian book published in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Eduards Volters transcribed it and wanted to publish it with the help of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The publication included Dauksa's biography, review of the Lithuanian language research, dictionary of vocabulary used in the catechism, and examples of Lithuanian dialects that Eduards Volters collected during his expeditions.

In 1898, Eduards Volters began to work on the publication of the postil of Mikalojus Dauksa, a much larger and more substantial work than the catechism.

Eduards Volters planned it for the 300th anniversary of the first publication in 1899.

Together with Filipp Fortunatov, Eduards Volters published the postil in sections.

Eduards Volters managed to convince the Soviet Union to complete the third section and it was published in 1927.

In 1901 and 1904, Eduards Volters published two volumes of Lithuanian Chrestomathy with excerpts from the oldest Lithuanian, Latvian, and Prussian texts, examples from 18th-century and early 19th-century writers, samples of local dialects, and examples from the writers of the late 19th-century writers.

Eduards Volters worked on publishing other Lithuanian works that violated the Lithuanian press ban.

Eduards Volters made a copy of the history of Lithuania by Simonas Daukantas and convinced Aleksandras Burba, then editor of Vienybe lietuvninku, to publish the work in the United States.

In January 1904, Eduards Volters managed to get approval for a small publication of poems by Russian poets Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, and Aleksey Koltsov translated into Lithuanian.

Eduards Volters's request was rejected, but he did publish America in the Bathhouse in 1905.

In 1887, together with Julius Doring, Eduards Volters identified the location of Apuole, the first Lithuanian settlement mentioned in written sources.

Eduards Volters tried to locate Voruta, the presumed capital of King Mindaugas, and the site of the Battle of Saule.

In 1930, in preparation for the 500th death anniversary of Grand Duke Vytautas, Eduards Volters supervised excavations and other works at the Kaunas Castle.

In 1932, together with Jonas Puzinas, Eduards Volters organized an expedition to locate Gotteswerder, a castle of the Teutonic Order that was destroyed in 1402.

Eduards Volters had no archaeological education and his methods were outdated, he did not have a systematic and disciplined approach to archaeological research, did not leave detailed reports on excavations, and published mostly popular science articles that frequently went off on a tangent instead of academic studies.