Our exhibition Medieval Women, in their own words, closed last weekend after a highly successful run (you can still find information about the topic and view some exhibition highlights here. Something that is also drawing to a close is the 2024-25 ice skating season.

What do these two things have in common? Well, one of the many ‘Spotlights’ in the exhibition was dedicated to Lidwina van Schiedam, patron saint of ice skaters and chronic pain. That too, is a peculiar combination, to say the least. Let me explain.

Lidwina (or Liduina, or Lidewy) van Schiedam is the most famous Dutch saint. Born in Schiedam in 1380, she lived there all her remarkable life until her death in 1433. When her father wanted to marry her off at the tender age of twelve, both Lidwina and her mother resisted. Lidwina even prayed to God to send her an illness that would make her unattractive to suitors. Whether you believe in divine intervention or not, her wish came true. In the winter of 1395, she was out ice skating with friends when she fell and broke a rib.

Lidwina falls on the ice, from Johannes Brugman,Vita Sanctae Lidwinae (1498). IA.48805 (as displayed in the Medieval Women exhibition)

The fracture resulted in an abscess which did not heal and she became increasingly ill. Eventually she became completely bedridden because of her pain. The pain also prevented her from eating and sleeping. She tolerated very little food, and legend has it that she survived on the Host alone. In modern literature this is sometimes referred to as ‘holy anorexia’. Initially, she resented her illness and pains but over time she came to accept them. She used her illness to develop her spiritualism and became a mystic and a healer. She reported having visions and out of body experiences. Following an investigation into her ‘eucharistic vision’, involving Christ taking the form of a host with five wounds hovering above her knees, the Bishop of Utrecht ruled in favour of Lidwina’s account and the veneration of Lidwina increased. She became known outside the bishopric of Utrecht and people flocked to Schiedam to see her for themselves and to seek healing.

The suffering Lidwina’s vision of Christ, from Johannes Brugman, Vita Sanctae Lidwinae

Lidwina died in Holy Week in 1433. A year later the Schiedam council built a chapel over her grave. In addition, attempts were made to canonise her, but the lengthy process was stalled by the Reformation, during which her chapel and grave were destroyed. Some of her relics were saved and after some travels they are now resting in the Liduina Basilica in Schiedam.

In the 15th century four lives of Lidwina were written. The oldest dates from 1434-1436, by Hugo van Rugge, a canon from the St.-Elisabeth monastery in Brielle. Around 1448 Thomas à Kempis  wrote his Vita Lidewigis virginis using Rugge’s work. In 1470 the only title written in Middle Dutch appeared. Long believed to have been written by Jan Gerlachsz, a relative of Lidwina, it is now thought not to be by him, although no alternative author has been suggested.

The Institute for Dutch History’s Digitale Vrouwen Nederland database has an entry for Lidwina which mentions a document issued by the City Council of Schiedam on 21 July 1421. By that time Lidwina had been ill for 23 years and the Council had kept a record of her health in great detail. For instance, it lists what she drank in a week: one pint of wine, diluted with water, with sugar and some cinnamon. The original document is lost, but the text was copied by Johannes Brugman in his Vita Sanctae Lidwinae, from 1498 and so it survived. Brugman was a Dutch Franciscan travelling preacher, famous for his rhetorical skills. The phrase ‘To talk like Brugman’ has become an idiom in the Dutch language.

Johannes Brugman preaching, etching by Barent de Bakker, after a drawing by Hermanus Petrus Schouten (1782). Image from Wikimedia Commons.

In the 19th and 20th centuries interest in Lidwina grew. The works by Thomas à Kempis and Johannes Brugman were newly translated with commentary. In 1994 Ludo Jongen and Cees Schotel re-issued a translation and photographic reprint of the Middle-Dutch Vita prior, entitled Het Leven van Liedewij, de maagd van Schiedam.

 

Cover of Ludo Jongen and Cees Schotel, Het Leven van Liedewij, de maagd van Schiedam (Hilversum, 1994). ZA.9.a.5895(2)

In 2014 Uitgeverij Verloren published a volume containing two separate works: Een bovenaardse vrouw: zes eeuwen verering van Liduina van Schiedam (‘A supernal woman: six centuries of reverence of Liduina van Schiedam’) by Charles Caspers, and a new translation of Thomas a Kempis’ Vita, entitled Het leven van de maagd Liduina (‘The life of the virgin Liduina’).

Charles Caspers, Een bovenaardse vrouw: Zes eeuwen verering van Liduina van Schiedam. (Hilversum, 2014) YF.2015.a.25455.

Koen Goudriaan linked Lidwina to the Brethren of the Common Life, starting from the new insight that the oldest surviving Vita was not written by Brugman, but by Hugo Rugge, who was connected to the Brethern and that places Lidwina in that tradition. (ZA.9.a.10168)

And what about skating? That is nearly at an end. The last major competition in the 2024-25 season will be World Championship Distances in Hamar, Norway, from 13-16 March. Dutch skaters are at the top of the boards, having honed their skills for at least two centuries, looking from the painting of a women’s speed skating race in 1809.

Skating Race for Women on the city canal of Leeuwarden, 21 January 1809, by Nicolaas Bauer. Image from the website of the Rijksmuseum.

Jaap Eden was the first official world champion and over the last twenty years the Dutch have dominated the skating scene. I wonder whether Lidwina is lending a hand.

Hand-coloured photograph of Jaap Eden. Image from Wikimedia Commons 

Marja Kingma, Curator Germanic Collections

References/Further reading:

Johannes Brugman, Vita alme virginis Lidwine, ed. A. de Meijer (Groningen 1963) Ac.936.k/3.

‘Vita prior’ ed. Daniël Papebrochius in: Acta sanctorum Aprilis II (Antwerp, 1675) pp. 270-302

Thomas à Kempis, Vita Lidiwigis virginis, ed. Michael Johannes Pohl. Opera omnia vol. 6 (Freiburg, 1905) pp. 315-453. 3706.aa.6.

Thomas à Kempis, Het leven van de heilige maagd Liduina, translated by Rijcklof Hofman (Hilversum, 2014) YF.2015.a.25455.

Koen Goudriaan, ‘Het Leven van Liduina en de moderne devotie’, in: Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis (2003) 6, pp. 161-236. ZA.9.a.10168.

Ludo Jongen and Cees Schotel, Leven van Liedewij, een Middelnederlandse vertaling van de Vita prior, waarschijnlijk eerst rond 1470 vervaardigd (Hilversum 1994) ZA.9.a.5895(2). Also available online.

Ludo Jongen, ‘Uit het oog, uit het hart? Over twee heilige maagden: Lutgard en Lidewij’, in: Gouden legenden: Heiligenlevens en heiligenverering in de Nederlanden, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Marijke Carasso-Kok (Hilversum 1997), pp. 127-137. YA.1998.a.6022

Ludo Jongen, Heiligenlevens in Nederland en Vlaanderen (Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 46-53.

J.B.W.M. Möller, Sint Liduina van Schiedam: in de mystiek en in haar tijd (The Hague, 1948) 4823.h.6.

‘Afschrift, gedateerd 1451, van de Schiedamse oorkonde van 21 juli 1421 met een vidimus van Jan van Beieren’, in: H. van Oerle, ‘Tleven van Liedwy die maghet van Scyedam’, Ons geestelijk erf 54 (1980) 3, pp. 241-266. P.101/476

Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland (Huygens Instituut, Amsterdam)

One of the many reasons books are so alluring and continue to enchant us with their magic is that, while immersing ourselves in fantastical fictional worlds, we can still see aspects of ourselves in the characters – whether we identify with them, reject them, or simply observe their journeys. Unfortunately, while queer representation has become more common in contemporary literature and popular culture, this was not always the case.

Ludmila Skokanová, later known under her literary pseudonym Lída Merlínová – a female Merlin – grew up in Czechoslovakia at a time when LGBTQ+ voices were scarce in literature. As she entered adulthood and realized that her dreams and desires did not conform to widely accepted norms, she had little literary representation to turn to. The years of the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938) saw the emergence of the so-called ‘Czech New Woman’ – a generation of women who gained voting rights, access to education, and the right to divorce. However, despite these progressive steps, Czechoslovak law still criminalized homosexual acts. Against this backdrop, Merlínová, a journalist, singer and dancer who was part of the queer scene, wrote Vyhnanci lásky (‘Exiles of Love’; Prague, 1929), the first Czech novel to explore same-sex love. She preferred the term ‘invert’ over ‘lesbian’, reflecting the language and perceptions of the time.

Cover of Lída Merlínová, Zdenin světový rekord: sportovní román (Prague, 1935) [Awaiting cataloguing] 

Merlínová was a prolific author, although not all of her works focused on queer themes. Unfortunately, very few copies of her books remain available today, as many were lost or destroyed due to censorship during the communist era. However, we recently acquired a rare copy of Zdenin světový rekord: sportovní román (‘Zdena's World Record: A Sports Novel’, the first and only edition of a fictionalized biography of Zdeněk Koubek. Koubek, originally known as Zdena Koubková, won two gold medals at the 1934 Women’s World Games in the 800-meter sprint before announcing in 1935 that he would be living as a man.

Page from Zdenin světový rekord: sportovní román with a facsimile of a note signed ‘Zdenka Koubková’

Interestingly, Merlínová’s book was published just before Koubek’s public announcement. The book includes a facsimile of an approving note signed Zdenka Koubková, still in the Czech grammatical form indicating female gender. In this note, Koubek endorsed Merlínová’s retelling of his story, recognizing its appeal to both professional athletes and the general public. Shortly after the book’s release, Koubek’s announcement made global headlines, sparking discussions in major publications such as TIME and the New York Times. Contemporary sports magazines debated the science behind gender transitions, and Koubek became a symbol of shifting gender perceptions and the growing recognition of gender fluidity.

Following his transition, Koubek retired from women’s sports and pursued various ventures, including Broadway performances and media appearances, although he never competed in men’s track events. His story remains a powerful reflection of the evolving conversations around gender identity and sports.

Meanwhile, Lída Merlínová outlived her supportive husband, Cyril Pecháček, and spent the rest of her life in Prague with her female partner, Kvĕta Lukáčovská. In 1962, same-sex acts were decriminalized in Czechoslovakia, a country that, at the time, encompassed both Czechia and Slovakia. After the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, Czechia and Slovakia became independent nations. On January 1, 2025, Czechia passed a bill legalizing same-sex partnerships – granting them rights equal to marriage in all but name. However, Slovakia has yet to adopt similar legislation.

As we celebrate LGBT+ History Month 2025, it is worth looking back and reflecting on the journey of those who paved the way for social change – those who defied norms and showed us the beauty of a diverse world through the lives they led. While we work on making Zdenin světový rekord available to readers, you may want to explore other books in our collection that celebrate the richness of queer culture. 

Olga Topol, Curator Slavonic and East European Collectoions

Further reading:

Melissa Feinberg, Elusive equality: gender, citizenship, and the limits of democracy in Czechoslovakia, 1918-1950 (Pittsburgh, 2006) YC.2013.a.6652

Karla Huebner, ‘Girl, Trampka, or Žába? The Czechoslovak New Woman’, in E. Otto, & V. Rocco (Eds.), The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s, pp. 231–251 (Ann Arbor, Mich, 2011) YC.2011.a.7758

Vera Sokolova, Queer Encounters with Communist Power: Non-Heterosexual Lives and the State in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1989 (Prague, 2021) YD.2023.a.153

Mark Cornwall, ‘Exiles of love?: uncovering lesbian voices in interwar Czechoslovakia’, in Journal of Lesbian Studies, 2024 

And check out some of out other blogs on LGBT+ topics:

https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2021/06/i-libertini-same-sex-desire-in-italian-baroque-literature.html

https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2023/02/all-the-strength-i-muster-to-live-queer-voices-from-poland.html

https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2022/02/love-like-any-other-maria-d%C4%85browska-and-anna-kowalska.html

https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2020/04/slovenian-gay-poetry-in-translation-tracing-the-unspoken-by-milan-%C5%A1elj.html

 

Today, on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we continue to stand with Ukraine. Kharkiv was one of the first places in Ukraine affected by the war in the first hours of the invasion, and this blog is about Kharkiv and its people.

In 2010, Viacheslav Babeshko (1941-2010), a Kharkiv-born poet, wrote a poem ‘Our Kharkiv’:

Our Kharkiv has risen a long time ago
For peace, goodness, and love.
It’s constantly working and doing research
And looks as beautiful as delightful spring.

And indeed, Kharkiv is a city of students and scientists: almost half of its population have university degrees, and the Kharkiv University, founded in 1804, is the oldest in Ukraine. Three Nobel Prize laureates – biologist Elie Metchnikoff, economist Simon Smith Kuznets and physicist Lev Landau – lived in the city at various times. Photographer Alfred Fedetsky put Kharkiv on the map of cinematography when he shot his documentaries in 1896.

Page from V. Myslavs’kyi, Istoriia ukrains’koho kino 1896-1930: fakty i dokumenty. T. 1. (Kharkiv, 2018)

The first Ukrainian literary magazines – Khar’kovskii Demokrit (‘The Kharkiv Democritus: The Thousand and First Magazine’, 1816), Ukrainskii vestnik (‘The Ukrainian Herald’, 1816-19), and later Ukrainskii zhurnal (‘The Ukrainian journal’, 1824-25) – were also published in Kharkiv. These titles are not held at the British Library, but they have been digitised by the Central Scientific Library of the Kharkiv National University named after V.N. Karazin.

One of the main contributors to The Ukrainian Herald was a writer whom Ukrainians consider the ‘founding father’ of Ukrainian prose. Hryhorii Kvitka (1778-1843) wrote under the pen name Osnov’ianenko, which referred to the name of his birthplace, Osnova, a village near Kharkiv.

Stamp featuring Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko (Image from Wikipedia)

As a young boy, Hryhorii knew his namesake Hryhorii Skovoroda, a famous Ukrainian philosopher, poet, and musician who was a frequent guest at his father’s estate. Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko tried a military career and even wanted to be a monk, but found his vocation in social activities and writing: he became one of the founders of the first private professional theatre in Kharkiv and the Institute for Noble Maidens.

Kharkiv Institute for Noble Maidens (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Although he published essays and ‘letters to the editor’ in various periodicals, Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko started his literary career relatively late in life. He was 56 years old when his collection of novellas in Ukrainian was published in 1834. Nevertheless, the book garnered much acclaim. In an immediately published extensive review, the prominent Ukrainian poet, ethnographer, and philologist Osip Bodianskii proclaimed a toast to Kvitka suggesting to praise ‘Pan Hrytsko’ for his bold and picturesque entry to literature “on a dashing Ukrainian horse”.

Apart from Kvitka-Osnov’ianenko, many Ukrainian writers lived and worked in Kharkiv in various periods of their lives. Among them were Petro Hulak-Artemovs’kyi (1790-1865), who laid the foundations of Ukrainian fables and ballads, and Mykhailo Starytsky (1840-1904), famous for his librettos for Ukrainian folk operas, translations, plays and poems.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, Kharkiv was a place where the Vilna Akademia Proletarskoi LITEratury (‘Free Academy of Proletarian Literature’) was established. Young writers and poets aimed to create a new independent Ukrainian literature and culture. They believed that the Soviet state would adopt a radically different approach from the old Russian policy of cultural imperialism. They belonged to the so-called Executed Renaissance – the generation of Ukrainian writers and educational and cultural figures who were executed in Stalin’s purges. One of the leading figures of the generation was Mykola Khvylovy.

Cover of M. Khvylʹovyĭ, H. Kosynka, O. Slisarenko, Opovidannia (Haĭdenav, [1946]) RB.23.a.33896

Cover of M. Khvylʹovyĭ, Zlochyn (Kharkiv, 1928) YA.1995.a.24647

Contemporary authors from Kharkiv have also made their mark on Ukrainian literature. One of the most translated Ukrainian writers is Serhiy Zhadan who, of course, is writing about the war today.

Cover of S. Zhadan, Sky above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front, translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler (New Haven CT, [2023]) DRT ELD.DS.761929

Among our most recent acquisitions is a new book by Daria Bura ‘The Heroic city of Kharkiv: 28 Stories of the Unbreakable’.

D. Bura, Misto-heroi Kharkiv: 28 istorii nezlamnosti (Kharkiv, 2024) Awaiting cataloguing

I would like to take this opportunity to send our support to our colleagues who work at the Central Scientific Library of the Kharkiv National Karazin University, all librarians, academics, the people of Kharkiv and all Ukrainians wherever they are at this moment.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator Slavonic and East European Collections

Our current exhibition ‘Medieval Women: In Their Own Words’ tells stories of Medieval women and their role and influence in personal, spiritual, and social life. A number of women rulers are featured, but one that is not shown is Queen Tamar of Georgia, whose story we tell here.

Queen Tamar’s reign (1178-1213) was both the apex and the final stage of the Golden Era of the Christian Kingdom of Georgia. The lustre of this reign was so brilliant and incomparable to all that preceded it in Georgian history that her court historian allowed himself to border on blasphemy in his hyperbolic praise of her: “We view Tamar as the fourth besides the Holy Trinity”. Not only were her contemporary panegyrists, historians and poets inspired by her beauty and wise governance, but she also became a part of the national folklore, a source of inspiration for thousands of legends, tales and poems for centuries to come.

A fragment of the early 13th-century fresco of Queen Tamar from Betania (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Tamar’s father, King Giorgi III, due to dynastic struggles, proclaimed her King during his lifetime. It was unprecedented in Georgia for a woman to be officially anointed King and hold the title of ‘King of Kings’, although some coins minted during her reign also acclaimed her as ‘Queen of Queens’. Such a bold innovation had everything to do with the development of philosophical studies in 12th-century Georgia. In the Gelati Monastery and Academy, texts by Plato, Aristotle and Neoplatonists were translated and taught. Plato demonstrates that women can be politicians and rulers alongside men. As Tamar’s contemporary, the philosopher-poet Shota Rustaveli, wrote: “A lion’s cub is of the same dignity, no matter whether it is male or female”, thus announcing the new political era in which royal women could be considered as rulers. However, not only women of royal descent but also other women of the nobility could enjoy this novel active political role.. When at the start of Tamar’s reign a faction of noblemen and merchants created attempted to limit monarchic absolutism and create a legislative body –a ‘tent – separate from the executive body, the King, Tamar, appointed two noblewomen, Kravai Jakheli and Khvashak Tsokali, to negotiate peace with the mutinous noblemen. Her choice was fully justified as Kravai and Kvashak effectively managed to quell the unrest.

Tamar and her father Georgi III. The earliest surviving portrait of Tamar from the church of the Dormition at Vardzia, c. 1184–1186 (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

The first years of Tamar’s rule were beset by struggles with the higher nobility that strove to subordinate her to their will. Because of this, Tamar was forced into an undesirable marriage to a Russian, Prince George Bogolubski. The marriage proved a failure, and George later attempted to usurp the throne, for which he was exiled from the Kingdom for good.

Tamar’s second marriage to Prince David Soslan was more successful: he was of the same lineage of the Bagrationi family as Tamar herself. The Bagrationi dynasty traced its origin back to the Biblical kings David and Solomon, a tradition that safeguarded the dynasty’s claim to rule exclusively over the Kingdom of Georgia. David Soslan proved to be an effective general who led Tamar’s army to a series of important victories over powerful Muslim neighbours. Two of those victories are of particular significance. The first was the battle of Shamkor of 1195, in which David Soslan outsmarted the enemy troops under Nusrat al-Din Abu Bakr, the atabeg of Arran, and routed his realm, establishing Shirvanshah Akhsitan there as a ruler and ally of the Georgians. The second was at the battle of Basiani in 1203 against the Seljuk Turks of the Rum Sultanate led by Sultan Suleiman II. These two great victories raised the power and prestige of the Georgian Kingdom to that of a regional superpower. Moreover, since Constantinople had been under Latin rule since the great sack of 1204, Tamar became the most powerful Orthodox ruler in Eastern Christendom, for which reason her panegyrists even dared to call Tbilisi the ‘New Rome’, while Tamar herself was acclaimed as ‘Augusta’, i.e. the Roman Empress. The Kingdom of Georgia at its height during Tamar’s reign extended from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, held a few neighboring principalities on vassalage terms, and led Christian missions to the mountainous Caucasian north. Many pagan Caucasian tribes were converted to Christianity and remained so until Islam replaced the Christian faith in the region a few centuries later.

Shota Rustaveli presents his poem to Queen Tamar, a painting by the Hungarian artist Mihaly Zichi (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Tamar’s reign was marked by major political and cultural developments. She chose to appoint officials to high posts on the basis not of noble descent, but of personal merit, according to the advice ascribed to Shota Rustaveli: “Noble descent costs a thousand, but a good character – ten thousand; if a man is not good as a man, his noble descent avails for nothing”. In the Gelati Academy philosophical studies thrived. In fact, Tamar’s panegyrist and poet, Ioane Shavteli, punningly relates the name Gelat[i] to Hellada, Greece, stating that Tamar’s Kingdom is a true heir to the great heritage of Hellenic philosophy. The broad and audacious vision of the Gelatian scholars presented Greek philosophy as a tool to better understand the Bible, as well as a valuable spiritual and intellectual endeavour in itself. Rustaveli goes even further and in his immortal poem ‘The Knight in the Panther’s Skin’, dedicated to King Tamar, as he calls her, creates a universal, eclectic world of knowledge in which Biblical wisdom and the Christian theology are creatively associated with Greek philosophy, Persian literature, Sufi mysticism and the latest scientific developments of the epoch. Scholars justly coined the term “Georgian Renaissance” for the period of Tamar’s reign, and the contemporary culture of the Kingdom of Georgia also thrived in the fields of architecture, painting, mosaic art and metalwork, examples of which are amply represented in Georgian churches and museums.

Basil the Treasurer, court historian of Queen Tamar, image from the manuscript ‘Life of the King of Kings – Tamar’, Or. 17154

Tamar was a deeply religious woman. She abhorred violence and forbade both torture and capital punishment in her realm. In a sincere display of humility, she would sew and knit priestly garments with her own hands and give them to humble priests. Her piety is evidenced in the many churches built all over Georgia on the most inaccessible hilltops to establish ceaseless prayer for her Kingdom and people. Before the decisive battle of Basiani, Tamar walked barefoot from Tbilisi to the monastery of Vardzia in a sacrificial feat of procession and prayers for the salvation of the Kingdom. There is a surviving hymn dedicated by Tamar to the Khakhuli icon of the Holy Virgin Mary in which we glimpse both her devotion and theological education:

From your virgin blood, o Bride, you became a mysterious matter of the heavenly Providence, having become the begetter of the Son of God, who also was born your Son, for the salvation of the world! Embellish, exalt and glorify me, Tamar, who, like you, also a descendant of David, for I have dared to embellish Your Icon that depicts You and Your Son, protect me together with my son.

The Orthodox Church of Georgia canonized Tamar soon after her death. There are two feast days celebrating her memory, one on May 14, the anniversary of her death, and another in the second week after Easter, celebrating Tamar on account of her piety alongside the women who came to the tomb of the resurrected Jesus.

Golden cross of Queen Tamar, composed of rubies, emeralds and large pearls (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Tamar’s reign symbolizes for Georgians the height of their political and cultural success and grandeur. In the subsequent history of Georgia, with its hardships and calamities, Tamar’s memory has shone as an unfading star, providing Georgians with hope for a better future. Georgians believe that she continues to protect the country assigned to her, and will continue to do so until the end of time.

Levan Gigineishvili, Professor at Tbilisi State University

References and further reading

https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2021/11/two-new-fine-editions-of-georgias-national-poet.html

https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2023/06/georgian-manuscripts-in-the-british-library.htm

Shota Rustaveli, The Man in the Panther’s skin: a Romantic Epic … a close rendering from the Georgian attempted by Marjory Scott Wardrop. (London,1912) 14003.bb.16.

Shota Rustaveli, Vepʻxis tqaosani = The knight in the Panther’s skin. In Georgian, German, English, Russian and French. (Tbilisi, 2016) LF.37.b.367.

Shota Rustaveli, The knight in the Panther’s skin: Selected Aphorisms. Translated from Georgian by Lyn Coffin. (Tbilisi, 2017) YD.2017.a.2390

David Shemoqmedeli, The knight in the Panther’s skin: a masterpiece in world literature. New York, 2017 (YC.2018.b.1050)

Ioane Savteli, Abdul-Mesiani. Tbilisi, 1915 (YF.2019.a.3365)

David Marshall Lang, Lives and Legends of the Georgian Saints. (New York, 1976) W.P.5206/15

John Oliver Wardrop, The Kingdom of Georgia: Travel in a Land of Women, Wine and Song. (London, 1888) 2356.c.14

William Edward David Allen, A history of the Georgian People: From the Beginning down to the Russian Conquest in the Nineteenth Century. (London, 1932) X.802/1941.

Donald Rayfield, Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. (London, 2012) YC.2013.a.14021

On February 14, European Collections featured at Doctoral Open Day themed ‘Global Languages, Cultures and Societies’. Marja Kingma, Curator of Germanic Collections, delivered a presentation introducing PhD students from across the UK and beyond to navigating the collections and identifying resources to support their research. In the afternoon, our curators hosted a show-and-tell session, offering the students a glimpse into the Library's unmatched holdings from continental Europe. The selections ranged from a quirky bottle-shaped Czech book to a Russian glossy LGBT magazine and a modern illuminated manuscript from Georgia. Spoiler alert – love-themed curatorial picks proved crowd pleasers. For those who could not make it, here is a taster of what you might have missed.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator of Slavonic and East European Collections, Olga Topol and Hanna Dettlaff-Kuznicka, Curators of Slavonic and East European Collections, turned the spotlight on minority languages and cultures, giving voice to the Evenks, Sakha, Kashubians, Silesians, and the Gagauz people of Ukraine. It was a revelation to many of the students to learn that Eastern Europe was both linguistically and culturally diverse, with a plethora of languages, ethnicities, and religious traditions across the region.

V. A. Dʹiachenko, N. V. Ermolova, Evenki i iakuty iuga Dalʹnego Vostoka, XVII-XX vv. (St. Petersburg, 1994) YA.1997.a.2298.

Marcin Melon, Kōmisorz Hanusik: we tajnyj sużbie ślonskij nacyje (Kotōrz Mały, 2015) YF.2017.a.20547. An interesting example of a crime comedy written in the Silesian ethnolect.

Milan Grba, Lead Curator of South-East European Collections, highlighted a groundbreaking work by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Srpski rječnik (‘Serbian Dictionary’), which proved very popular among researchers with an interest in linguistics.

Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Srpski rječnik (Vienna, 1818) 12976.r.6.

It was the first book printed in Karadžić’s reformed 30-character Cyrillic alphabet, following the phonetic principle of "write as you speak." The dictionary contained over 26,000 words and was trilingual, with Serbian, German, and Latin entries. It standardised Serbian orthography but also preserved the nation’s oral tradition. The dictionary’s encyclopaedic entries encompassed folklore, history, and ethnography, making it a pivotal text in both linguistic reform and cultural preservation.

Anna Chelidze, Curator of Georgian Collections, showed the students a contemporary illuminated manuscript created in 2018 by the Georgian calligrapher Giorgi Sisauri. The Art Palace of Georgia commissioned the work especially for the British Library to enrich our Georgian collections. The poem Kebai da Didebai Kartulisa Enisa ('Praise and Exaltation of the Georgian Language') was written in the 10th century by John Zosimus, a Georgian Christian monk and religious writer. It is renowned for its profound reverence for the Georgian language, employing numerological symbolism and biblical allusions to underscore its sacredness.

(Giorgi Sisauri), John Zosimus, Kebai da Didebai Kartulisa Enisa, (2018) Or. 17158

Sophie Defrance, Valentina Mirabella and Barry Taylor, Curators of Romance Language Collections, treated the students to some ... romance.

Sophie Defrance took a tongue-in-cheek approach to the theme by suggesting another way to look at (some) love letters with Le rire des épistoliers.

Cover of Charrier-Vozel, Marianne, Le rire des épistoliers: XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (Rennes, 2021) YF.2022.a.9956

The volume gathers the proceedings of a 2017 conference at the University of Brest on the expression, manners, and importance of laughing and laughter in 16th- and 17th-century correspondence, with examples from Diderot’s letters to his lover Sophie Volland, or from the exchanges between Benjamin Constant and his confidante Julie Talma.

Valentina Mirabella decided to revisit the Boris Pasternak’s timeless love story ‘Doctor Zhivago’. Turns out, the history of the novel’s publication in Italy was nearly as turbulent as the story itself! It was first published in Italian translation as Il dottor Živago in 1957 by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Although an active communist, Feltrinelli smuggled the manuscript out of the USSR and resisted pressure against its publication. The demand for Il dottor Živago was so great that Feltrinelli was able to license translation rights into 18 different languages well in advance of the novel's publication. The Communist Party of Italy expelled the publisher from its ranks in retaliation for his role in the release of the book they felt was critical of communism.

Cover of the 34th (in the space of just two years!) edition of Il dottor Živago by Boris Pasternak translated from Russian by Pietro Zveteremich (Milano : Feltrinelli, 1959) W16/9272

Barry Taylor drew attention to the epistolary relationship and an electric bond between the Spanish author Elena Fortún (1886-1952) and the Argentine professor Inés Field (1897-1994) with the book Sabes quién soy: cartas a Inés Field (‘You know who I am: letters to Inés Field’).

Elena Fortún, Sabes quién soy: cartas a Inés Field (Seville, 2020) YF.2021.a.15259

Fortún was the author of the popular Celia books, which followed the heroine from a seven-year-old in well-to-do Madrid to a schoolteacher in Latin America. The books give a child’s-eye-view of the world. They were censored by Franco and the author was exiled, but the books have been re-published by Renacimiento of Seville in the 2000s. Fortún’s novel Oculto sendero (‘The hidden path’) published in 2016 is seen as a lesbian Bildungsroman.

Fortún met Inés Field in Buenos Aires. Now that both women are dead, critics feel free to read the correspondence through the prism of the Bildungsroman.

Ildi Wolner, Curator of East and South-East European Collections, explored the representations of love in art with Agnes’s Hay Sex : 40 rajz = 40 drawings.

Agnes Hay, Sex: 40 rajz = 40 drawings ([Budapest, 1979]) YA.1997.a.2586

Ágnes Háy is a Hungarian graphic artist and animation filmmaker, who has lived in London since 1985. Her unique experimental style of drawing uses simple lines and symbols to convey complex meanings and associations, and this booklet is no exception. Considered rather bold in Communist Hungary at the end of the 1970s, this series of sketches explores the diverse intricacies of gender relations, without the need for a single word of explanation.

Page from Sex : 40 rajz = 40 drawings [Budapest, 1979] YA.1997.a.2586

Susan Reed, Curator of Germanic Collections, shared a fascinating collection of essays examining aspects of the love letter as a social and cultural phenomenon from the 18th century to the present day.

Cover of Der Liebesbrief: Schriftkultur und Medienwechsel vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, herausgegeben von Renate Stauf, Annette Simonis, Jörg Paulus (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008) YF.2010.a.14652

The authors scrutinised letters from historical and literary figures including Otto von Bismark, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Rainer Maria Rilke. The book ends with a consideration of how online messaging forms might transform the way we write love letters.

Ela Kucharska-Beard, Curator of Baltic Collections, displayed a mysterious metal box containing a booklet in English and Lithuanian, some photographs, posters and letters.

Vilma Samulionytė, Liebe Oma, Guten Tag, or The Pact of Silence (Vilnius, 2018) RF.2019.a.120

Liebe Oma, Guten Tag, or The Pact of Silence is a moving tribute from the Lithuanian photographer Vilma Samulionyė to her grandmother, a Lithuanian German Elė Finkytė Šnipaitienė. When Vilma’s grandmother took her own life in her 70s, Vilma and her sister Jūrate decided to delve into the family history. Their research resulted in a documentary film, an exhibition, and an artists’ book. Along the way the sisters face taboos, one of them being a chain of suicides in the family.

The journey into the family’s German history and their post-war life in Lithuania left them with some unsettling questions. Who was Kazimieras and was he the reason why Ella Fink left her family behind? Throughout the story letters and photographs create a link between the family in the West and in the East, between the living and the dead. 

We hope you have enjoyed this virtual show-and-tell of highlights in our European collections. We look forward to welcoming you to the next Doctoral Open Days in 2026!

One of the exhibits in our current exhibition Medieval Women: in their own Words is the first European printed book ascribed to a female printer. The printer in question is Estellina Conat, who worked with her husband Abraham printing Hebrew books in Mantua in the 1470s. The book is an edition of a 14th-century poem by Jedaiah ben Abraham Bedersi entitled Behinat ha-‘Olam (‘The Contemplation of the World’). It was printed around 1476 and in the colophon, Estellina states: “I, Estellina, the wife of my worthy husband Abraham Conat, printed this book”. (In fact she says she “wrote” the book since the Hebrew language had not yet settled on a word for the relatively new technology of printing.) She adds that she was assisted by Jacob Levi, a young man from Tarrascon in Provence.

Final page of Behinat ha-‘Olam (Mantua, ca 1476) C.50.a.5. (ISTC ij00218520) The colophon at the foot of the page names Estellina Conat as its printer

No other book from the Conat press survives with Estellina’s name in the colophon, and she has often been overlooked as the first woman printer in Europe, perhaps because she printed in Hebrew rather than in classical Latin or Greek or the contemporary European vernaculars more familiar to western scholars of early printing. Many sources still give the name of Anna Rügerin as the first woman printer instead.

Anna is named in the colophons of two books printed in Augsburg in 1484 (around 8 years after Estellina’s work!). She was part of a family of printers: her widowed mother had married the printer Johann Bämler, and Anna’s brother Johann Schönsperger, perhaps encouraged by Bämler, set up a press with Anna’s husband Thomas. After Thomas died, Anna appears to have taken over from him and printed in her own name editions of the historic German law book, the Sachsenspiegel and of a handbook for writers of legal and official documents entitled Formulare und deutsch rhetorica (Augsburg, 1484; IB.6605; ISTC if00245500).

Colophon naming Anna Rügerin as the printer of an edition of the Sachsenspiegel (Augsburg, 1484) IB.6602 (ISTC 00024000). Image from Wikimedia Commons, from a copy in the Bavarian State Library.

Another woman printer emerged in the 1490s in Stockholm. Anna Fabri, like Anna Rügerin, took over the work of printing on the death of her husband, a common pattern for female printers in the early centuries of the industry. In 1496 she put her name to the colophon of a Breviary for the diocese of Uppsala. Here she explicitly states that she completed the work begun by her husband. As in the case of Estellina Conat, no other book survives bearing her name.

Final Page of  Breviarium Upsalense (Stockholm, 1496; ISTC ib01187000), naming Anna Fabri in the colophon. Image from a copy in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris. The British Library holds a single leaf inserted in a copy of G.F. Klemming, Sveriges äldre liturgiska literatur (Stockholm, 1879) C.18.c.13.

We don’t know exactly what role Estellina and the two Annas played in the production of the books that bear their names, but it’s certainly possible that it was more than merely overseeing the work and that they were involved in the physical processes of the print shop. We know that nuns of the Florentine convent of San Jacopo in Ripoli worked as typesetters in the printing house associated with the church and its Dominican community, and a Bridgettine abbey at Vadstena in Sweden printed a Book of Hours in 1495, although their press apparently burned down soon after and was not restarted. The current BL exhibition also features woodcut prints made and coloured by another Bridgettine community at Mariënwater in the Netherlands. All this work carried on the long tradition of medieval nuns working as scribes, artists and illuminators (also richly evidenced in the exhibition), bringing it into the new age of printing.

A leaf from a music book for use in the Latin Mass, illuminated by nuns of the Poor Clares convent in Cologne in the late 14th or early 15th century. Add MS 35069

The 18th-century scholar of early Hebrew printing, Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi, criticised Estellina Conat’s edition of the Beh.inat ha-‘Olam as unevenly printed, and scornfully suggested that it might be “the effort of a woman attempting something beyond her powers.” But as Estellina and her sister-printers show, printing was indeed within the power of women and they played a part in it from the early decades of the industry. Thanks to ongoing research, and publicity such as the Medieval Women exhibition, these woman printers and their work are ever more visible today.

Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections

References/Further reading

Adri K. Offenberg, ‘The Chronology of Hebrew Printing at Mantua in the Fifteenth Century: A Re-examination’ The Library, 6th series, 16 (1994) pp. 298-315. RAR 010

Hanna Gentili, ‘Estellina Conat, Early Hebrew Printer’, in Medieval Women: Voices & Visions, edited by Eleanor Jackson and Julian Harrison (London, 2024) [Not yet catalogued]

Sheila Edmunds, ‘Anna Rügerin Revealed’, Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History 2 (1999) pp. 179-181. 2708.h.850

Anabel Thomas, ‘Dominican Marginalia: the Late Fifteenth-Century Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli in Florence’, in At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy, edited by Stephen J. Milner (Minneapolis, 2005), pp. 192-216. YC.2005.a.12149

What do a censored Spanish classic, a mathematics textbook from Tsarist Russia, and the first national education textbook from Poland have in common? They are all part of the British Library’s European Collections, spanning from antiquity to 1800. These fascinating books do more than preserve history – they provide valuable insights into the intellectual, political, and cultural dynamics of their era, offering opportunities for research and discovery.

As part of the Doctoral Open Day on 31 January, we are showcasing a selection of remarkable books. Each tells a unique story – of censorship, of scientific progress, of the development of national identity. Here, we explore some of the fascinating books you may encounter during the Doctoral Open Day.

Poland: Enlightening the Nation

In 1773, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth established the Commission of National Education (Komisja Edukacji Narodowej, KEN), the first state-run educational authority in the world. Its goal was to create a modern, secular education system that was accessible to all social classes, moving away from the traditional church-dominated schooling.

Krzysztof Kluk 1739-1796, Paweł Czenpiński, 1755-1793, Botanika dla szkół narodowych, etc. (Dzieło, ... podług Prospektu ... Pawła Czenpinskiego, ... przez ... Krzysztofa Kluka ... napisane; od Towarzystwa do Xiąg Elementarnych roztrząśnione, etc.)., w Warszawie 1785 (Warszawa, 1785) 988.d.29.

A prime example of KEN’s publishing efforts is Botanika dla szkół narodowych (‘Botany for National Schools,’ 1785) by Krzysztof Kluk and Paweł Czenpiński. This textbook was designed to teach practical botany, bringing Enlightenment ideas into the classroom. The book was one of many created by KEN’s Society for Elementary Books, which commissioned mathematics, science, and literature textbooks to standardize education across Poland.

Russia: The First Mathematics Textbook

The first Russian textbook on mathematics by Leonty Magnitsky, Arifmetika (‘Arithmetics’), was written in the early Slavonic language and published in 1703. Its first edition of 2,400 copies was extraordinarily large for that time and served as the primary mathematics text for instruction in Russia until the mid-18th century. The book was in effect an encyclopaedia of the natural sciences of its day. It emphasized the practical applications of mathematics, demonstrating how it could be used in various real-life situations, from laying a brick wall to calculating loan interest. The origins of the manual lie in Peter the Great's establishment of the School of Navigation in Moscow, and the subsequent appointment of Magnitsky at the school's helm.

Leonty Filippovich Magnitsky, Arifmetika (Moskva, 1703) 8531.f.16

Hungary: The First Gold-Painted Book

This is the second work published about Hungarian history, although published outside the country. It tells the story of the Magyars from the earliest times to the 1480s and is illustrated with lavish hand-coloured woodcuts, that have retained their brilliance through the centuries. This Augsburg edition, printed on vellum, is the very first printed book in history known for using gold paint.

Johannes Thuróczy, Chronica Hungarorum (Augsburg, 1488) IB.6663

Romania: A Scholar-Prince’s Masterpiece

Among our most treasured Romanian books is Divanul sau gâlceava înţeleptului cu lumea (‘The Wise Man’s Parley with the World’, 1698), written by Dimitrie Cantemir, a scholar, philosopher, and Prince of Moldavia.

Printed in both Romanian Cyrillic and Greek, this was the first secular book published in Romanian. It discusses morality, philosophy, and the human condition, presenting a dialogue between reason and worldly desires.

The copy comes from the collection of Frederick North, Fifth Earl of Guilford, a noted philhellene and collector of early printed Romanian books. The front cover is in its original binding, made of red goatskin over pasteboard. It features a panel design showcasing the coat of arms of Dimitrie Cantemir, with corner tools incorporating floral motifs and bird designs.

Dimitrie Cantemir, Divanul sau gâlceava înţeleptului cu lumea (Iaşi, 1698) C.118.g.2.

Italy: The Beauty of St Mark’s Basilica

A magnificent and exhaustive work documenting the Basilica of St Mark in Venice, undertaken with the support of John Ruskin, following disputed restoration work to the Basilica's south facade in 1865-75. One of 16 volumes, this volume contains 69 hand-coloured engraved plates that painstakingly represent every detail of the floor of the Basilica. Ferdinando Ongania was a publisher and editor who worked with John Ruskin on a project to document the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice. Ongania also ran an antiquarian bookshop in St. Mark's Square and supplied Ruskin with books.

Ferdinando Ongania, La Basilica di San Marco in Venezia. Dettagli del pavimento ed ornamenti in mosaico della Basilica di San Marco in Venezia (Venezia, 1881)  Tab.1282.a./ Tab.1283.a.3.

Spain: Censorship and Forbidden Texts

Censorship was an everyday reality in Habsburg Spain, where the Inquisition closely monitored books. Even seemingly harmless works like Don Quixote were subject to scrutiny.

Our copy of the 1650 edition El Parnasso Español, y Musas Castellanas de D. Francisco de Quevedo Villegas was censored according to the Index of 1707, with passages inked out due to their “disrespectful references to the clergy”. Interestingly, Spanish censors had strict rules against religious criticism but showed little concern for nudity or crude humour.

Lost Books: Replacing What Was Destroyed

During World War II, a German bombing raid on the British Museum (where the British Library was then housed) destroyed many books. One of these was Zeeusche spectator over de boedel en het testament van capitein Willem Credo (‘The Zeeland Spectator on the Estate and Will of Captain Willem Credo’, 1734).

After the war, the British Library painstakingly reconstructed lists of lost books, marking them with a ‘D’ for ‘Destroyed’. Now, decades later, we have finally been able to replace this book and restore it to our collections, removing it from the list of war losses.

Gerard Bacot, Zeeusche spectator over de boedel en het testament van capitein Willem Credo onder toezigt van Gerard Bacot Predikant te Koudekerk en syn vrou Paulina Credo nevens een Journaal of DAg-Lyst van een bedroefde reis naa het vermakelyk Alphen (Amsterdam, 1734)

Why These Collections Matter

These books are not only historical artifacts – they are invaluable resources for research. By preserving both original texts and modern scholarship, the British Library provides a gateway to exploring the past. Whether you’re investigating the development of education, scientific advancements, or literary censorship, our European Collections offer a wealth of material to uncover.

If you’d like to explore these fascinating books and more, visit the British Library and discover Europe’s intellectual heritage, from antiquity to 1800! And if you are a new doctoral student whose research interest is more contemporary, why not join us for our session on Global Languages, Cultures and Societies on 14 February.

Etty Hillesum in 1939 (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

This year to mark Holocaust Memorial Day we have been looking at diaries and other autobiographical documents. As my colleague Olga Topol writes in her blog post, “The diaries of these individuals are not merely archival records; they are powerful reminders of the human capacity for resilience and creativity in the face of adversity.”

One remarkable example of that resilience are the diaries written by Etty Hillesum in Amsterdam. She acknowledges the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust, but manages to rise above them and does not let the horror dominate her writings. She records the growing evidence of “the interrupted life” around her. She writes it all down, starting on 9 March 1941 and ending on 10 October 1942 with the wish “One should like to be a balm on many wounds.”

She writes very openly about love, sexuality, about her struggle to find God, to root out hatred, including hate towards Germans. More than anything else she wants to serve others. She gets a job at the Jewish Council helping Jewish citizens navigate the laws imposed on them by the German authorities. When the deportations of Jews to the Westerbork transit camp started, she volunteered to accompany them.

Jewish citizens of Amsterdam obey the order they received in the post to come to the Olympiaplein in Amsterdam South to be transported to Westerbork. Image from an edition of Het Verstoorde Leven: Dagboek van Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943 (Bussum, 1983) Blog post author's own copy

Jewish people were told they were going to work in Germany, so many went. Those who didn’t were either taken from their homes or had to go in hiding. Many people did not have the means to hide, and Etty felt she could not abandon them, so she voluntarily went to Westerbork, out of solidarity.

Aerial photo of Westerbork Transit Camp, Drenthe, Netherlands taken in March 1945 (Image from Wikimedia Commons)

At Westerbork she worked as a social worker, which allowed her to travel many times between the camp and Amsterdam. She had ample opportunity to go into hiding to save herself, but she refused to do so. Inevitably, on 7 September 1943, Etty and her family, who had arrived in Westerbork a while earlier, were put on a transport to Auschwitz. One of Etty’s friends who saw her off writes in a letter to friends that Etty was “her normal cheerful self, having a word of encouragement and kindness for all she met”. Etty wrote a postcard to another friend and threw it out of the train. It was found by farmers and posted. It says that “they had left the camp singing”. As soon as they arrived in Auschwitz on 10 September, her parents were sent to the gas chambers. On 30 November the Red Cross reported Etty’s death. Her brother Mischa died on 31 March 1944, and her other brother Jaap died on his way back to the Netherlands after having been liberated from Bergen-Belsen.

Before Etty went to Westerbork she gave her diaries to her friend Maria Tuinzing, who passed them on to a writer, Klaas Smelik. He and his daughter Johanna, who transcribed the diaries, started looking for a publisher for them in 1947. No-one wanted to publish them; they were considered “too philosophical”.

It was only in 1981 that the diaries were published in Dutch as Het verstoorde leven (An Interrupted Life). Since then, interest in and research into Etty Hillesum and her work have only grown. There are conferences, books and two museums; one in her birth town of Middelburg which opened in 2020 and one in Deventer. Translations of the diaries into French, Italian, English, German, Danish and Finnish followed.

Etty Hillesum’s diaries with a page of her handwriting. Reproduced in Judith Koelemeijer, Etty Hillesum: het verhaal van haar leven (Amsterdam, 2022) YF.2023.a.27.

Why not let the diaries speak for themselves?

The sky is full of birds, the purple lupins stand up so regally and peacefully, two little old women have sat down on the box for a chat, the sun is shining on my face — and right before our eyes, mass murder. The whole thing is simply beyond comprehension. (8 June 1943)

And if there were only one good German, then he would be worthy of protection against the whole barbaric gang and because of that one good German one should not pour one’s hatred onto a whole people. (15 March 1941)

And if God does not help me to go on, then I shall have to help God. — The surface of the earth is gradually turning into one great prison camp, and soon there will be nobody left outside. … I don’t fool myself about the real state of affairs, and I’ve even dropped the pretence that I’m out to help others. I shall merely try to help God as best I can, and if I succeed in doing that, then I shall be of use to others as well. But I mustn't have heroic illusions about that either. (11 June 1942)

Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

Marja Kingma, Curator Germanic Language Collections, specialist Dutch.

References/further reading:

Etty Hillesum, Het verstoorde leven: Dagboek van Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943, 18e druik (Amsterdam, 1986) YA.1988.a.1992 (English Translation by Arnold J. Pomerans, An Interrupted Life: the Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-43 (London, 1999) YC.2004.a.8709.

Etty Hillesum, Drie brieven van den kunstschilder Johannes Baptiste van der Pluym (1843-1912): met twee reproducties, uitgegeven en van een toelichting voorzien door A.C.G. Botterman-v.d. Pluym. (Apeldoorn, 1917 [i.e. Haarlem, 1943]) Cup.406.b.78. (Letters written to David Koning from Westerbork in 1943 and published clandestinely the same year.)

Philippe Noble, ‘De dagboeken en brieven van Etty Hillesum in Franse vertaling: Het dubbele filter’ In: Filter: tijdschrift over vertalen, Vol. 9, nr 3 (2002) pp. 37-48. YF.2007.a.229

Oord, Gerrit van, ‘Het dagboek van Etty Hillesum in Italië’ (Nijmegen, 2002) In: Filter: tijdschrift over vertalen, Vol. 9, nr 3 (2002) pp. 49-56.

Veel mooie woorden: Etty Hillesum en haar boekje Levenskunst,edited by Ria van den Brandt and Peter Nissen (Hilversum, 2017) YF.2018.a.20211.

Spirituality in the Writings of Etty Hillesum: Proceedings of the Etty Hillesum Conference at Ghent University, November 2008, edited by Klaas A.D. Smelik et al. (Leiden, 2010). Supplements to The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, vol. 11. YD.2012.a.877.

Klaas A.D. Smelik, Reading Etty Hillesum in Context: Writings, Life, and Influences of a Visionary author (Amsterdam, 2018) YD.2018.a.3834

The Lasting Significance of Etty Hillesum’s Writings: Proceedings of the Third International Etty Hillesum Conference at Middelburg, September 2018, edited by Klaas A.D. Smelik (Amsterdam, 2019) YD.2021.a.1416. Also available online free of charge.

Etty: de nagelaten geschriften van Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943, edited by Klaas A.D. Smelik, Gideon Lodders, Rob Tempelaars. 2nd ed. (Amsterdam, 1987) YA.1989.a.8106.

For centuries Lithuania was an important spiritual and cultural centre of Jewish life. The biggest Jewish communities were in Vilnius (‘Jerusalem of the North’) and Kaunas, the second biggest city in Lithuania. Before the Nazi invasion in June 1941, around 240,000 Jews lived in Lithuania; only several thousand – around 5% – survived the Holocaust.

In the interwar period Kaunas, a temporary capital of Lithuania, had a flourishing, vibrant and dynamic Jewish community. At one point a third of the inhabitants of Kaunas – 33,000 people – were Jewish. The city had around 40 synagogues and prayer houses, including the Slobodka yeshiva, one of the largest and best known yeshivas in Europe.

Gerardas Bagdonavičius, The Old Synagogue in the Old Town, 1930. Reproduced in Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, Synagogues in Lithuania: a catalogue (Vilnius, 2010). YD.2011.b.2062

The Jewish educational network consisted of numerous Yiddish and Hebrew schools. There was a flourishing artistic and music scene. The city had a Yiddish and a Hebrew theatre, several daily Jewish newspapers, sports clubs and youth organisations. Jewish political organisations were thriving. Social welfare organisations and charitable societies took care of those less fortunate; the Kaunas Jewish Hospital cared for both Jewish and non-Jewish patients. In 1920 the Central Jewish bank was established in Kaunas, leading a network of 85 Jewish banks.

Posters advertising cultural events in Lithuanian and Yiddish, image from Hidden history of the Kovno Ghetto, general editor Dennis B. Klein (Boston, 1997). LB.31.c.9499

Football match in the Kaunas Maccabi Stadium between the Kovas Club of Šančiai and the Maccabi Sports Club, April 25, 1926, image from Žydųgyvenimas Kaune iki holokausto (Vilnius, 2021). YF.2023.a.2399

Central Jewish Bank. Image from Wikimedia Commons

During the Nazi occupation the Kaunas Jewish community was almost completely destroyed. How to commemorate those who perished in such tragic circumstances?

The 11th Kaunas Biennial, which took place in 2017, explored the theme of monuments. What is a monument? Is our understanding of monuments changing? Is there a need for different kinds of commemoration? During the biennial the participating artists created, among others, a number of site-specific performances and installations referencing Kaunas’ Jewish past.

The artist Jenny Kagan, whose parents survived the Kaunas Ghetto, in her installation Murmuration, using a video projection and LED lighting, evoked the memory of the lost Jewish community. A brightly lit up building of a former Hasidic synagogue (the lights followed the rhythm of street lighting) on closer inspection turned out to be empty and derelict. The emptiness of the building is reminiscent of an empty sky from which starlings, known for their murmurations, quickly disappear, their numbers drastically declining.

Murmuration, from Yra ir nėra = There and not there: (im)possibility of a monument (Kaunas, 2018) [awaiting shelfmark]

Paulina Pukytė curated several performances and installations for the 11th Kaunas Biennial. One of them was At Noon in Democrats’ Square. Every day at noon, from 15 October to 30 November 2017, in the Vilijampolė district of Kaunas, a singer stood facing the empty space which once was Demokratų Square. The singer sang two songs in Yiddish: Yankele and My Yiddishe Mame. The performance lasted 7 minutes.

At Noon in Democrats’ Square, from Yra ir nėra

Vilijampolė, also known as Slobodka, on the right bank of the Neris River, was the site of the Kaunas Ghetto where thousands of Jews perished during the Holocaust. On 29 October, 1941, the day of the so called ‘Great Action’, around 27,000 Jews were forced to assemble on Demokratų Square. Men, women and children stood there for hours while a selection took place. Those deemed strong enough to work were temporarily saved; the rest, 9,200 of them, were executed the next day in Fort IX, part of the city‘s fortifications turned into a temporary prison.

At Noon at Democrats Square was a commemoration of those who perished as a result of the ‘Great Action’.

Paulina Pukytė, the chief curator of the 11th Kaunas Biennial, is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator and critic, and lecturer at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. She will talk about the (im)possibility of monuments at the Holocaust Memorial Day event, held at the British Library on 27th of January.

Ela Kucharska-Beard, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections

References and further reading:

Paulina Pukytė, Kas yra = Something is (Vilnius, 2021) [awaiting shelfmark] 

 Arūnas Bubnys, Kaunas ghetto 1941-1944 (Vilnius, 2014). YD.2016.a.992 

 Martin Winstone, The Holocaust Sites of Europe : an Historical Guide (London, 2015). YC.2016.a.6368 

 Nick Sayers, The Jews of Lithuania: a Journey Through the Long Twentieth Century (London, 2024)

Monument to children murdered in Babi Yar, Ukraine (image from Wikipedia)

‘Field of Burial’ where the ashes of murdered and cremated prisoners were scattered, Maly Trostenets, Belarus (image from Wikipedia)

In 1961, a young Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko visited the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv. He was taken there by a fellow writer Anatolii Kuznetsov. A native of Kyiv, Kuznetsov experienced Nazi occupation as a child and knew about the tragedy in Babi Yar firsthand. Both authors were shocked to see that there was no sign in memory of 33,771 Jews who had been murdered by the Nazis just in two days in September 1941. Possibly over 100,000 more people, among them prisoners of war, Soviet partisans, Ukrainian nationalists and Roma people, were killed there in the following months. However, the Soviet authorities were reluctant to collect and disclose records of those crimes. On the same day, Yevtushenko wrote a poem:

No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.

Cover of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, The collected poems 1952-1990  (Edinburgh, 1991) YC.1991.b.6558

The poem was published in the influential Moscow newspaper Literaturnaia gazeta (‘The Literary Newspaper’) but was severely criticised by the authorities and Communist Party officials for presenting Jews as the main victims of the fascist Germany.

Immediately after the end of the Second World War, Stalin designed his own antisemitic campaigns such as the prosecution of members of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee and the Night of the Murdered Poets, the campaign against ‘rootless cosmopolitans’and the so-called ‘doctors’ plot’. Although the campaigns stopped with the death of Stalin, antisemitism in the Soviet Union was strong, and the official party line was not to accept the Holocaust as a concept. Instead, all victims of genocide and atrocities were put together under the ideologically loaded term ‘peaceful Soviet civilians’.

However, in the time of the Khrushchev Thaw artists were hopeful that their voices would be heard in the new political climate. In 1962, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No 13 for bass soloist, bass chorus, and large orchestra with lyrics by Yevtushenko. Although the symphony does not have an official title, it is known as ‘Babi Yar’. Anatolii Kuznetsov tried to publish his autobiographical book also under the title of Babi Yar. The book was seriously cut by censors but was eventually published in 1967. After defecting to the West, Kuznetsov managed to publish the book in full in 1970.

Anatolii Kuznetsov, Babii Iar: roman-dokument (Frankfurt am Main, 1970) X.900/6037

However, neither Yevtushenko, nor Kuznetsov were the first to write about Babi Yar. Probably the first poem (lost and rediscovered only in 1991) about the murder in Babi Yar was written by a Jewish-Ukrainian poet Liudmila Titova in 1941:

The order was supported by the threat of execution,
They obeyed but were shot.
Not a single candle was lit that night,
Those who could, left and hid in the basement.
The stars and the Sun hid in the clouds
From our world that is too cruel.

Liudmila Titova (image from Wikipedia)

In 1943, another Ukrainian poet and at that time a Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Commissars) of the Ukrainian SSR, Mykola Bazhan,wrote his response:

The grave wind blew from those ravines —
The smoke of mortal fires, the smoking of burning bodies.
Kyiv watched, angry Kyiv,
As Babi Yar was thrown into flames.
There can be no atonement for this flame.
There is no measure of revenge for this burning.
Cursed be the one who dares to forget.
Cursed be the one who tells us: “forgive me...”

Only in 1991 was a Ukrainian Jewish poet, Yurii Kaplan, able to compile a small anthology – Ekho Bab’ego IAra (‘The Echo of Babi Yar’) where he managed to include other pieces of contemporary poetry.

Page from Literatura ta Zhittia, N 2, zhovten’, 2007.

Cover of Ekho Bab'ego Iara : poeticheskaia antologiia (Kyiv, 1991) YA.1996.a.9243

In 1946, Ilya Ehrenburg, a prominent Soviet writer, published a poem under the title of ‘Babi Yar’ about the genocide of his people:

My child! My blush! 
My countless relatives! 
I hear how you call me  
from every hole.

Together with another Jewish Soviet writer Leonid Grossman, Ehrenburg compiled and tried to publish a volume of eyewitness accounts documenting the atrocities during the Holocaust on the Soviet territories occupied by the Nazis.

During the war, frontline soldiers sent Ilya Ehrenburg a huge number of documents found in the territories liberated from the occupiers and told in their letters what they had seen or heard. Ehrenburg decided to collect the diaries, suicide letters, and testimonies related to the Nazis’ extermination of Jews and to publish the ‘Black Book’. A couple of extracts from the book were published in a magazine in 1944. However, after the end of the war, the publication was delayed several times. In November 1948, when the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was closed, the set of the ‘Black Book’ was scattered, the galleys (printer’s proof) and the manuscript were taken away. Ehrenburg’s daughter later gave the manuscript and other documents to the Yad Vashem archives and the book was published in Russian in 1980. However, that was not the full text. The first full Russian edition appeared only in 1991.

The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry : [prepared by] Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman, translated and edited by David Patterson ; with a foreword by Irving Louis Horowitz and an introduction by Helen Segall. (London, 2002) YC.2002.b.953

The book documents atrocities that were committed on all occupied Soviets territories, such sites as Fort IX in Kovno (Kaunas), the Rumbula and Bikernieki Forests in Riga and Maly Trostenets near Minsk and Zmiyovskaya Balka near Rostov-on-Don.

Analysing the policy of ‘forgetting the specificity of Jewish suffering’, Izabella Tabarovsky of the Kennan Institute, points out that “by 2006, Yad Vashem, the world’s leading Holocaust Museum and research institution, found it had barely 10-15% of the names of the 1.5 million Jews who had died in Ukraine (in contrast to 90% of European Jews whose names were known)”.

At the Holocaust Memorial Day Fragments of the Past: Holocaust Legacies and Commemoration, Professor Jeremy Hicks will give a talk on ‘ Representations of the Holocaust in Soviet Cinema’, which will examine further the creation of silences and gaps in memories of Holocaust.

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator, East European Collections

References/Further reading:

Maxim D. Shrayer (2010). ‘Poets Bearing Witness to the Shoah’ in Studies in Slavic Languages and Literature (ICCEES Congress Stockholm 2010 Papers and Contributions), edited by Stefano Garzonio. PECOB: Portal on Central Eastern and Balkan Europe. University of Bologna. Pp. 59-119.

Ekho Bab’ego IAra: poeticheskaia antologiia, [sostavlenie i vstupitelʹnaia statʹiia IU.G. Kaplana]. (Kyiv, 1991). YA.1996.a.9243

A. Anatoli (Kuznetsov), Babi Yar: a Document in the Form of a Novel, translated by David Floyd. (London, 1970) W67/8178

Izabella Tabarovsky. Don’t Learn from Russians about the Holocaust. Published: February 2, 2017