Apgaismības starpnieki Kurzemē

The monograph by the history of book culture researcher, Head of Research at the National Library of Latvia Dr. philol. Pauls Daija this year received the Latvian Literature Annual Award for his erudite contribution to the understanding of the role of Baltic German culture and its representatives in the growth of Latvian literature and national self-awareness, and the Latvian Academy of Sciences award, highlighting it as one of the 12 most significant achievements in Latvian science in 2025. The book provides an insight into one of the rarest researched and most mysterious eras in Latvian book culture – the first half of the 19th century. At that time, the peaks of the Enlightenment period – the works of Gothards Frīdrihs Stenders and Garlībs Merķelis – were already a thing of the past. Meanwhile, the Young Latvian movement was still ahead. Pauls Daija introduces readers to the intermediate stage between these events – the seemingly peace-breathing Biedermeier world. The heroes of the book are pastors who often called themselves "friends of latvians". The event takes place within the framework of the Latvian Council of Science project “Grāmata un sabiedrība Latvijā: Eiropas dimensija un kultūras pārmaiņas” (lzp-2023/1-0263).