Beyond the forests, beyond the rivers, among the ravines and hills, there is an old wooden manor house. Not tall, but long and wide, with a big porch, leaning on white stems, full of lovely corners, cozy and warm, a faithful host to all our joys and sorrows. In front of it, a large sleepy pond with mysterious depths, gilded in the evenings by the moon and the stars, and a garden that is singing, inhaling, dreaming. The garden lovingly holds the pond and the manor house – its faithful companions close to its broad chest, and whispers to both of them some unending tales, some mysterious matters, some long, eternal sorrows. And they listen in turn – silent and thoughtful.

And it’s gone and gone and gone… And you, O my mother, have gone, flew from the nest into the heavens. But before that, the little birds flew away… And a whirlwind tore the nest apart…

 

These romantic texts by the noblewoman writer Marija Pečkauskaitė-Šatrijos Ragana (1877–1930) very aptly describe the complex and painful fates of Lithuanian manors and the people who lived there. In 1795, after the Third Partition, the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth ceased to exist as a state. The efforts of the nobility to liberate the country from the occupation of the Russian Empire were unsuccessful. After the uprising of 1863 the occupying power heavily punished the nobility for seeking independence. The concept of the Lithuanian nation was changing – the idea of civic nation, or territory-based nationality which had survived from the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, was changed to one based on ethnicity. At the time, the language used by the individual was not relevant to belonging to a nation, so Polish-speaking nobles considered themselves Lithuanians. To avoid a new rebellion and to keep the former territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania under its influence, the Russian government sought to cause a division among the people living in the area – Lithuanian and Polish speakers. The traditional nobleman’s manor turned into an instrument of colonization and Russification. The authorities confiscated estates, some of which were sold for debt. A discriminatory law of 1865 forbade people of “Polish origin” to acquire land. The change in the form of farming after the abolition of serfdom, when the village separated from the manor, also had a big influence. The radical land reform of the Republic of Lithuania in 1922 was unfavorable to manors, which limited their size to 80 ha (increased to 150 ha in 1929). The nation-state created the conditions for the formation of a modern Lithuanian nation, and in this process, the “polonized” nobility had no place. In the interwar period, Lithuania had about 4,000 manors and estates. However, in 1940, the Soviet authorities abolished manors as a form of land use and tenure, and their owners were exiled to Siberia or repressed in other ways, and the buildings themselves were destroyed.

No separate collection of manor objects has been formed in the Open-Air Museum of Lithuania, although the relocation of the manor buildings – at first the estate of Padubysys which burned down before acquisition by the museum, and then the estate of Aristava was planned, and the location of the future complex was marked in the master plan. Most exhibits were acquired in the first decades of the museum’s activity. The collections contain furniture, preserved objects, and works of art, mostly reflecting the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, from the manors of Pašušvys, Naugardiškės, Palėvenė, Mantvidiškės and others. The ethnographic field expeditions of the 1960s, in search of artifacts to be transferred to the museum, photographed manors that no longer exist today. Poor or perhaps deliberately very vague records limit more accurate historical research, but they still allow us to feel the spirit of the old Lithuanian manors and estates that have already disappeared, and the breath of the culture, destroyed by time and mankind, that existed within them, all of which we would like to share with you.

Exhibition „In search of lost time: memories from Lithuanian manors“ is open from the 15th of August, 2023 in the Aristavėlė Manor.

Curators

Justas Rimavičius

Inga Levickaitė

Designer

Lina Jonikė

Conservators

Gražina Babkauskienė

Martynas Kosas

Audronė Gogelienė

Algirdas Šalkauskas

Julija Špakovaitė