The Glass Ele-phant
By © Anton
Vendamencsh, 2017
Chapter 8/ In The Wake Of Overt Violence 1
There will be some readers who will believe the following to
be fiction. They will be partly right, because for much of it is based on
memories from childhood (some very clear, some not so much) and thoughts* after
the fact, sometimes called second thoughts. Even so, as the writer of this
‘fiction’, I believe that the events happened as described, but were silenced (for
religiously reasons) by the Lutheran church, by an a uneducated and misinformed
(as to geopolitics and history) leadership of the Latvijan state, and by the
loss of self-sacrificial momentum that was once initiated by the Moravian
church. The efforts of the latter initiated, then resulted in the sovereign
state of Latvija.
*Second
thoughts are referred to contemptuously by the academics and rationalists of
our virtual world-time. Nevertheless, as dreams sometimes prove, there is
another thinker within ourselves. Psychologists refer to this brain as the
‘unconscious’, whereas it is my belief that it is conscious enough, even
superior in consciousness to our ‘normal’ ego sourced consciousness. The
recently discovered ‘new organ’ called mesentary , may indeed be the
brain that informs our dreams and second thoughts. This is not to say that the
mesentary thinks as our brain does, but that it sends to our brain complex
signals, which the brain then interprets differently from our visually
influenced and thereafter constructed ‘consciousness’. The murder of the H pylori germ (“a biomicrobe
inherited from our forebears”) by antibiotics is a case in point; male and
female are a case in point; the environment within which we live and sometimes
change is a case in point.
The story
of my grandfather* (1860-1939) begins with his (and
mine) Herrnhuter ancestors, who my dna analysis shows came from what is now called
Slovenia and Croatia. I have no idea how they came to Herrnhut in Germany,
though I believe it may be due to a now eradicated and forgotten connection to
the Cathars, whom the neoChristian Church, aka the Catholics, eradicated in the
13th and 14th centuries. Church records show my family
name appearing in what used to be Livonia-Livland from the middle of the 18th
century on. Though many of the Herrnhuters lived in the geographic region about
Valmiera
(northern Latvija), many drifted south and westward. Thus, after getting his
teacher and choir director credentials, grandfather married a young woman who
sang in his choir, then—about the year 1885--settled for a teaching job in Plātere,
Ogre region. This was the region that his
forebears had settled into and where he was born. In the late 19th
century, the Platere school was one of the best in what is now known as Latvija.
Grandfather became the principal of the school from 1884-1889. Platere is but a
stone’s throw from Madliena ( 1 ) ( 2 ). Given his status as an educator and the grounding
of his forebears in the region, one cannot doubt that he was well informed
about the history of the region and his family’s part in it.
*The
link (see grandfather) has a number
of inaccuracies. For example, grandfather’s mother (my greatgrandmother) was
born Anna Kaktiņa on a farm named ‘Kances’ (Kanchi/Kanķi village), and his
parents were not ‘farmers’ per se, but Herrnhuter preachers or what the
Latvijans called ‘teicēji’ i.e. speakers, presenters. Grandfather’s father
worked as the manager on the estate of a German baron. The estate was called Bahnus or Bānužu muiža’, Taurene. His title
was not manager, but starasts. The latter is also the name of an upper level
(star) preacher among the now extinct Cathars. As the map shows, Taurene and
Madliena are in near proximity to each other, though in the days when travel was
by horse wagon the distance may have taken more than a day to cover.
What is note
worthy about Madliena is that in 1840, the Hernhuter preacher Dāvids Balodis was forced by the Lutherans* from
his home, which they destroyed. Indeed, ‘religious wars’ have not ceased, but
have been silenced. Balodis relocated to Riga, where he continued to preach on
behalf of the Moravian Church to factory workers. When again asked to cease his
activities, Balodis appealed to the Russian Orthodox bishop for help, who permitted
him to preach in a Russian orthodox church which was located in the Russian
Orthodox cemetery. When pressure from the Lutherans did not cease, Balodis went
over to the Russian Orthodox Church, causing more than 7000 Herrhuters to join
him. Balodis then left Riga and went back home, even past Madliena to a village
then known as Liograd, where he founded a Latvian Orthodox Church.
*Due
to religious oppression dating as far back as the 12th century, the
history of the Madliena Church is beset by lies
and diversionary stories. The earliest of lies, disseminated by the Catholic
invaders, avoids mentioning that the history of the region is closely tied to
that of Jersika, the 12th century Balt kingdom, that most likely
practiced the Cathar faith. The kingdom, located up stream of Daugava river, was
destroyed during the Albigensian Crusade in the 13th
century. It makes one realize that the Albigensian Crusade, generally believed
to have taken place in Occitania, southern France,
also pressed a campaign in the northeast of Europe. The Cathar practice of endura (self-sacrificial death due to
illness or old age) is likely responsible for the story that the tower of the
Madliena Church was built only after a maiden was cemented into its walls. No
wonder that the local people flocked to the Madliena site as if it was their Jerusalem
(=Jersika in local parlance). The intolerant underbelly of the Latvian Lutheran
Church continues to manifests itself in the current effort of its Archbishop
(Vanags) to distance the Latvian Lutheran Church from the European Lutheran
Synod by joining the fundamentalist oriented Missouri Synod in America and
denying women the right to minister. Not surprisingly, the Archbishop has made
a numer of efforts to join Lutherans to the Catholic Church. Tnough Dāvids
Balodis, the Herrnhuter preacher, is not mentioned as being part of Madliena
history, a recent gratuitous diversionary lie occurs in an internet link with
the mention of Jānis Balodis, a general of the nascent Latvian armed forces in
WW1 military conflicts, as the liberator of Madliena. In effect, the name of
the general is to erase the name of the Herrnhuter narrator a century earlier.
The
pressure of the Lutheran church on the Herrnhuters had not relented by my
grandfather’s time (1880s) and was one of the causes for the break-up of his
marriage. Grandmother (possibly center of photo in black
dress), an ardent believer, nevertheless opposed her husband’s efforts to
escape the Lutheran gag order** as such could be avoided only by turning to
materialism. But grandfather would not let himself be deterred. Finding his
income as a principal insufficient to support his family and to continue his
activities as a Herrnhuter, grandfather opened two hardware stores, one in
Madliena, the county of his domicile, another in nearby Skrīveri. It was one of
his first overt efforts to escape the silence imposed on him.
Unfortunately,
both stores went bankrupt—not because grandfather did not pay sufficient
attention to business (as deliberately falsified rumors claimed), but because of
continued attempts of the Lutherans to intimidate his Herrnhuter clientele. Undeterred,
grandfather turned to writing, and in 1895 won a prize for his play “Miglā”/ In
A Fog. The play (belittled by critics for not being “great”) concerned itself
with damage done to the people of the countryside by alcoholism. In 1904, to meet
creditors demands, grandfather left his position as a school principal and relocated
to Riga, where he worked as editor for a German and a number of Latvian
language newspapers.
*In
the winter of 1860, the year grandfather was born, his father’s inn was
destroyed by fire caused by the same forces that displaced Dāvids Balodis from
his home in 1840 (see link above). Incidentally, the surname Balodis means Dove
in Latvijan. The name was to suggest the dove that appeared over the head of
Jesus at the time of his baptism by John the Baptist. Grandfather’s mother,
nicknamed Abinya/ Abiņa by her grandchildren (Abiņa possibly derived from avene/abene/raspberry)
had to put her infant son onto a snowpile as she tried to salvage what could be
salvaged from the burning inn. The blame for the fire was put on
greatgrandmother, who allegedly was foolish enough to make candles over a hot kitchen
stove. When greatgrandfather died soon after the fire, his Herrnhuter family
was driven into poverty. The local German baron (I am not sure whether the one
of Madliena or Taurene), unlike the Lutherans, was sympathetic to the family’s
plight and rescued grandfather’s future by helping him to an education at
Cimzes Seminary in Valka. The seminary was founded by a Latvijan Herrnhuter.
After
coming to Riga, grandfather continued to take an interest in the theatre by
associating himself with the New Theatre of Riga (Jaunais teātris). His
original reason for joining and supporting the theatre was, most probably, to
learn of contemporary trends in the theatre. However, the trend he discovered
was tragedy, both for himself and his family.
Once in
Riga granfather became interested in a young woman who worked as a volunteer
wardrobe attendant at the New Theatre. Her name was Emilia. Emilia was married
to one of the actors (Elks) of the theatre. Emilia was also associated with the
newspaper world by working as an advertisement saleswoman for the same newspaper
that grandfather was working at as an editor. Thus, one cannot be sure whether
the love affair of the couple began before or after grandfather took an
interest in the Riga theatre, and whether it was Emilia who introduced him to
the New Theatre. In any case, Emilia was twenty years younger than grandfather,
who in 1908 (the year the New Theatre reopened following the revolutionary
unrest of 1905) was 48 years old.
Needless to
say, the affair destroyed grandfather’s relations with grandmother. Regretfully,
none of their children left a memoir that would tell details of the turmoil that
grandfather’s affair with Emilia brought the family. Because of grandfather’s
later success as a founder and editor of The Latest News, and reputed
millionaire, all in the family achieved high social positions and feared the harm
that a scandal could bring.
H
pylori germ http://www.snf.ch/en/researchinFocus/newsroom/Pages/news_140902_horizons_massacre_in_stomach.aspx
Madliena
( 1 ) https://www.google.lv/search?q=map+of+madliena+pagasts+lv&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab&gws_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=ZSJyWpHpCoiqsAGnsaOIDQ https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/lv/9/99/Madlienas_pagasts_LocMap.png
Madliena
( 2 )
s
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