How has genealogy research evolved in Latvia over the centuries? Insights from anthropologists at RSU

Agita Lūse, Social Anthropology Researcher at RSU

Family reunions have become popular in Latvia over the last few decades. Many homes also have a family tree drawn as a school project, special family photo albums cherished by older family members, and stories about the family’s ancestors. Genealogical knowledge still has a place in today’s hectic pace, knowledge about our origins and that of our relatives. So, what is the history of genealogy research in Latvia?

Today, there are many enthusiastic practitioners of genealogy. Family tree researchers can often be found in archives perusing the shelves alongside professional historians. However, there has been little research into how genealogical research became as popular in Europe as it is today, or the different purposes it has served. In any case, the practice was much less common before the 20th century. At the end of the 19th century, genealogy was almost exclusively as pastime for nobles and aristocrats – after all, property rights were based on a person’s ability to prove their relationship to the original owners, while being connected to prominent families determined status.¹ The situation changed around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the creation of family trees became very popular, for example in Germany. According to a publication by an association of German family researchers, genealogy was transformed from a “sport of the nobles” into a “science of the people”, and the middle class began to dominate the largest genealogical societies. In Latvia, such societies were started by the Baltic Germans, but the popularity of genealogy research among the wider population was driven by other considerations.

Photo: Courtesy of Valdemārs Klētnieks, “Dzimtas pētīšana” (Studying Heritage), 1939, Latvijas Vēstures Institūta Žurnāls 3 (11); 403-40

Raising collective self-confidence

In the first decades of the 20th century, professional historians and physical anthropologists, carried out genealogical research alongside enthusiasts. Admittedly, both these disciplines were at the time quite strongly influenced by politics and ideology. Where ideas of national unity were cultivated, genealogy was largely aligned with efforts to write the social history of the nation. In addition, family history research was seen as having the potential to strengthen ethnic self-confidence. For example, in 1935 an anonymous author in the newspaper Latgales Vēstnesis urged readers to study their family’s history², thus becoming more self-confident ‘in spite of the sense of insignificance inculcated by German barons and clergymen’.

Calls like those in an article by Valdemārs Klētnieks in the journal Latvijas Vēstures Institūta Žurnāls in 1939 encouraged people to bolster their self-confidence by studying their families, thus refuting ingrained stereotypes according to which ‘the concept of a free man was synonymous with being German’, while Latvians were considered peasants. The propagation of such stereotypes was attributed to German historians and Germanophile civil servants.

¹ More on this in the chapter “Radniecība un valsts attiecības Livonijā 13.–16. Gadsimtā” (Kinship and State Relations in Livonia in the 13th-16th centuries) from the book Radniecība un valsts īstenošana mūsdienu Latvijā: kolektīvā monogrāfija (Kinship and State Performance in Contemporary Latvia, 2024) by Vija Stikāne.

² As Klāvs Sedlenieks writes in his chapter “Radniecība mūsdienu Latvijā” (Kinship in Modern Latvia) from the aforementioned book, the concept of family in Latvia ‘is treated rather loosely, referring to a set of ancestors and relatives that the ego associates with. So, a family often includes both relatives with whom the ego shares a surname and those with a different surname.’.

Source: LSM.lv