How to Represent Freedom
In 1922, the Prime Minister of the newly independent nation of Latvia, proposed erecting a new national monument in the centre of Riga to commemorate those who had lost their lives to make Latvia free. In the following years, many sculptors put forth their ideas but all were rejected. At the end of 1929, a new competition was announced for the design. By the following year 32 designs had been submitted. In a secret ballot vote, the winning design went to the already well-known sculptor Kārlis Zāle. He had named his design ‘Shine like a star!’ (‘Mirdzi kā zvaigzne!’ in Latvian).
Zāle, originally from what is today Lithuania, had gained fame as one of the sculptors of the figurative memorial complex at the Riga Brother’s Cemetery. This cemetery is the most famous and largest military grave site in Latvia, serving as the final resting place for thousands of soldiers from WWI and the Latvian War for Independence from 1914 to 1920. The cemetery commision assured his fame – but the Latvian Freedom Monument would be Zāle’s legacy.
Zāle’s ambitious design for the new structure included 13 separate sculptural groupings with 56 figures, encompassing Latvian culture and history including subjects such as ancient Curonion warriors, the 1905 Revolution, historical battles, Baltic religion, Latvian folk heroes, motherhood & family, traditional workers, Latvian singers and more. The most visible and striking of the figures in the design was the figure of ‘Liberty’, a 9-meter-tall woman placed at the top of the soaring monument. Standing with upstretched arms, she proudly holds three golden stars, one for each of the three regions of Latvia: Vidzeme, Kurzeme and Latgale. This crowning centrepiece was to be forged in Sweden, from Zāle’s drawings, using the highest quality copper.
After the announcement of the winning design, a location had to be agreed upon. After months of discussions, it was decided that the new monument would be built on Brīvības iela, in the same location where the bronze equestrian statue of Peter the Great was unveiled by Tsar Nicholas II back in 1910. The cornerstone was laid on November 18th 1931, the 13th anniversary of the original proclamation of Latvian independence. The monument was finally unveiled to an excited public exactly 4 years later on November 18th 1935.
Polockas Street
Kārlis Zāle was born in 1888 and spent much of his youth and young adulthood in the coastal city of Liepāja. He was not a great student, actually getting expelled at one point. He spent much time watching the ships coming in and out of port, chatting with sailors that had seen far off lands and dreaming of adventure. Like many boys at that time he yearned for the sea. He would never fulfill that dream however. According to friends, the young Zāle (or Zālīte which was his real surname) had a vision one day in a pub of being an artist. He ended up attending the prestigous Kazan School of Art. Despite marrying in 1912, the young sculpting student lived a wild life complete with alcohol, drugs and women. He would become a ‘larger than life’ figure which would define him the rest of his life.
After completing his studies, Zāle and his wife Anna Briede, moved into a little wooden house at Polockas iela 11 (today Satekles iela) in Riga in 1922. Around the time he started on the Freedom Monument, he built a larger and more modern workshop on the site. In the mid-30s the family also had a new house built, designed by the well-known architect Ernests Štālbergs, who served as an architect on the Freedom Monument. Between 1931 and 1935, Kārlis Zāle would spend countless hours designing figures, making full-scale sketches, creating plaster models and sculpting some of the smaller elements of the Freedom Monument in his workshop on Polockas iela 11. In 1935 the childless couple adopted a daughter, Saskija. Polockas/Satekles iela 11 would continue to be Zāle’s workshop until 1939, when the family would change their place of residence to Inčukalns, a village north-east of Riga.
In December 1927, Olga Rozentals and Andrejs Blezurs were married at St. Martin’s Lutheran Church in Riga. There are two witnesses listed in their marriage record. As a genealogist, I try not to leave any stone unturned and I spent a bit of time trying to research who these witnesses were, hoping it might add details to the lives of Olga and Andrejs. I wasn’t disappointed.
Mārtiņš and Johanna Ošiņš were long-time friends of Andrejs. Mārtiņš worked as a sailor and boilermaker and had also spent time in the UK Merchant Marine during WWI, just as Andrejs had. Mārtiņš’s wife, Johanna, was from Belgium. As Antwerp was one of the major port cities for sailors prior to the war, I am guessing that he met Johanna in Belgium and brought her back to Riga. Mārtiņš and Johanna Ošiņš lived at Polockas iela 13 (today Satekles iela 13) at the time of Olga and Andrejs’s marriage in 1927. This is the address right next door to the home and workshop of Kārlis Zāle and his family.
It is not out of the realm of possibility that Andrejs and Olga, while visiting with their friends on Polackas iela might have run into the artist. Would they have greeted him and his family? Kārlis may have enjoyed chatting with sailors about their adventures, adventures that had inspired him as a young man back in Liepāja. We will never know if there was any relationship there, but certainly Andrejs, Olga and their friends must have been aware of who lived next door.
This was a very interesting and evocative detail to come across. It has indeed contributed not only to my knowledge of this time and place, but also to the world that these family members inhabited. Unfortunately, Andrejs would never live to see the completed Freedom Monument as he died of a heart attack at the end of 1929, just before Zāle’s design was proclaimed the winner.
Zāle’s Legacy
Zāle began suffering from tuberculosis just after his work on the Freedom Monument had finished. His health gradually became worse and worse. In 1939, he moved to the countryside with his family to try to regain his strength. But after catching a cold in February 1942, he passed away at the age of 53. His wife and daughter would end up fleeing Latvia and emigrating to the United States not long after this, where they would remain for the rest of their lives.
It is a bitter piece of history that the long-awaited monument to Latvian freedom, that was Zāle’s greatest achievement, would only stand for another five years before that freedom was taken away with the Soviet takeover in 1940 and then the Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944. Latvia would not know freedom for another five decades while it was part of the Soviet Union.
Zāle’s masterpiece would endure however, and miraculously it not only survived but remained a silent beacon of hope. 50 years later Liberty with her three golden stars was still standing strong and once again could be openly acknowledged as a national symbol.
Zāle’s former home also survived. In the Soviet era, the house at Satekles iela 11 was used to host meetings of an association of woodcarvers and artisans. The house today is known as the ‘Kārlis Zāle house’ and there is a wall along the street commemorating the location’s significance. The location of that wall today is the prior location of house No. 13, where Mārtiņš and Johanna Ošiņš lived in apartment 3 back in 1927. Unfortunately the artist’s former house is currently empty and falling apart and I have heard there could be plans to demolish it.
Kārlis Zāle is one of the most famous artists in Latvian history and his iconic Freedom Monument serves as the symbolic heart of not only Riga but the entire country. The sculptor is buried in the Riga Brother’s Cemetery, next to the stone figures he created over a hundred years ago.
