Colonisation,Decline and Loss: Making Livonian Time in Nineteenth-Century Russia

Abstract

This article analyses how the historical time of the region of Livonia was made by Baltic-German scholars in Romanov Russia in the nineteenth century. It is done by bringing the history of provincial historiography into current discussions of scientific temporalities, power and materiality. It focuses on three aspects of Baltic-German time-making, firstly the separation of German Christian time from indigenous pre-time in the Livonian past. Secondly, the source collecting and founding of the library and museum of the Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Altertumskunde der Ostseeprovinzen Russlands (GGuA) are analysed as practices that bound and synchronised time. Finally, it investigates the recurring themes of decline, of German rule, and material loss of evidence of Livonian time and history. These aspects are approached with the assumption that temporal and political orders shape each other. Although the Baltic Germans constituted the educated and political elite, they struggled to assert their historical uniqueness and the notion that there had been a time when they ruled the Baltic colonies. Time-binding practices such as collecting, organising and publishing historiographical sources were crucial for Livonian time to be materialised and told. However, over the nineteenth century, lost sources became as important to the Baltic-German scholars’ understanding of Livonian time and history as the preserved sources were. Thus, Livonian time came into being through both what was present and what was forever lost. In conclusion, it is emphasised that the Livonian time that started with German colonisation and ended with foreign conquests and Romanov rule was one way of legitimising the past and present privileges that Baltic Germans felt entitled to.

The power, materialities and challenges of provincial historical time

While studies of historical time have been conducted from both national and global perspectives (Edelstein, Geroulanos and Wheatley, 2020; Steglich, 2021), this article contributes to the field through provincial perspectives on time and its material dependencies. This is done by analysing how time was told by scholars immersed in Livonian history in the Baltic provinces of Romanov Russia in the nineteenth century. The provincial case might seem odd to a reader who is not specifically focused on Eastern European history. However, as the article shows, the case of Livonia ideally allows the hierarchies of historical time-making in Europe to be uncovered, as well as the great efforts of and challenges faced by scholars invested in telling the time of this region. To unfold all this, the following approaches the scholarly activities of members of the Baltic-German elite with the assumption that temporal and political orders shape each other (Edelstein, Geroulanos and Wheatley, 2020: 3ff). This means that the article brings the history of provincial historiography into current discussions of time and power, and of synchronising multiple temporalities in the sciences (Ekström and Bergwik 2022; Jordheim 2014). For historical time to be scientifically underpinned, its materialities needed to be collected and assessed. Therefore, those who wanted to make and control Livonian time knew that sources were the key to success. But, as the article emphasises, material loss in the past came to create major difficulties in the enterprise of making Livonian time as well as its history, with far-reaching implications.

Nineteenth-century scholars ascribed an incomparable role to the study of history, and although many genres and topics were on the agenda, national history had a particularly strong position (Baár, 2010: 46; Porciani and Tollebeek, 2012: 5–7). At the same time, historical studies developed into a science of facts through the archival practices and seminar activities of scholars such as Leopold Ranke, who is often referred to as the founder of modern source-based history. ¹ Sources, and the archives, libraries and museums where they are preserved, were thus a prerequisite as much for scientific historiography as to scholars concerned with making Livonian time. Sina Steglich has shown that national archives not only functioned as historiographical resources; these institutions also materialised and communicated national time to the wider public. Steglich has argued that national archives functioned as chronotopos, meaning that they provided time with a sense of natural order, stability and authenticity in a rapidly changing world (Steglich, 2021). From the perspective of museums, Christina Fredengren and Caroline Owman have demonstrated how they function as “time laboratories” where the power structures and agency associated with time can be unfolded (Fredengren and Owman, 2024: 94–99). Drawing on these works, the article regards historiographical archives, libraries and museums as collections that can materialise certain narratives of time. This perspective is combined with Anders Ekström and Staffan Bergwik's concept of time-binding techniques and Helge Jordheim's idea of time synchronisation. Ekström and Bergwik have defined time-binding techniques as certain technologies and fields of knowledge that have “enabled ways of connecting and visualizing different frames, layers, and durations of time” (Ekström and Bergwik, 2022: 10). Historiographical work, then, enabled certain time(s). The materialisations that this article analyses were shaped by practices that were carried out to bind time, such as the collecting, studying and ordering of sources of Livonian history in collections, and through scholarly lectures and publications.

Time-binding also meant synchronising times into a whole. On the surface, historians’ understanding of time in the nineteenth century was characterised by a linear chronology of progress, fuelled by senses of national and religious belongings. However, Jordheim has argued that this modern temporal regime was constantly challenged by other underlying times, narratives and rhythms that needed to be synchronised to avoid temporal collapse (Jordheim, 2014: 501–502). This article demonstrates that although Baltic-German scholars studied Livonian history from antiquity to modern times, the time that primarily interested them was limited. It was the time of the German Livonian nation, which had fallen in the sixteenth century, and this made them synchronise time hierarchically. The case therefore contrasts with the time of strong nations that Steglich has brought to the fore, and thus contributes to making conflicts in telling time visible. However, before Livonian time making can be analysed, the difference between provincial and national perspectives needs to be unfolded. This is done by considering the time and history of Livonia in light of the German concept of Heimat, or homeland, as this was a central way that Baltic Germans in the nineteenth century thought about past and present belonging.

Heimat Livonia: a dying history brought back to life

“Is that a history too? I cried out. You miserable, unhappy land, this is not the story of a living, but a dying one, not a tragedy, but only the final stage of a tragedy,” an anonymous author proclaimed in the Baltic-German journal Der Refraktor in September 1836. ² What the author was describing was the character of Livonian history, rejecting it as a hopeless enterprise. It totally lacked – the author claimed – its own ideas, great deeds and peculiarities (Der Refraktor, 1836: 159–160). However, shortly after Livonian history was declared dead, it was decisively brought back to life at the twentieth meeting of the Gesellschaft für Geschichte und Altertumskunde der Ostseeprovinzen Russlands (the Society for History and Archaeology of the Baltic Provinces of Russia, GGuA). There, the anonymous letter was addressed by the deacon and historian Peter August Poelchau in a talk that dealt with the usefulness of Livonian history. Poelchau asked his audience if “we really [are] just dissecting a dead body that costs [too much] effort to touch?.” ³ He then thoroughly argued why the history of their Fatherland was well worth pursuing. To him there was no reason to be ashamed of it, as if it were a historical aberration (Missgeburt). The history of their Heimat, Poelchau concluded, was not always glorious. However, irrefutable evidence made it possible to prove that greatness had not been completely absent in the Livonian past (Poelchau, 1840: 336–337).

What was the meaning of the Livonian history that these men were so passionately arguing over, and how did it affect the making of Livonian time? Provincial and local history developed simultaneously with the nationalisation of European historiography, but have subsequently been overshadowed by the extremely influential political and cultural phenomenon of nationalism. However, the interest in and establishment of provincial and local historiographical societies and collections had their own characteristics, narratives and interests, and the German concept of Heimat can be used to illuminate this. Heimat means home, homeland or place of birth, and refers to an emotional place of belonging. The space can be imperial, national, provincial – or more private and local. The idea, or rather ideas, of Heimat among German speakers cannot be homogeneously defined but are rather historically, socially and spatially contingent. Ulrike Plath has shown that the notion of Heimat among Baltic Germans in the long nineteenth century was fragmented and constantly changing (Plath, 2014: 55f, 77). From another perspective, the cultural geographers Beate Ratter and Kira Gee have argued that Heimat can be understood as a practice, as it represents acts of putting one's surroundings into a meaningful order (Gee and Ratter, 2012: 128 ff). This article contributes to the research on the Heimat concept in the Baltic provinces by framing Livonian history and time as imagined spaces of belonging of a privileged group of people trying to maintain their position in society. Following Ratter and Gee, I will explore how certain Baltic-German scholars created temporal orders that underpinned their understanding of the past. I will emphasise that their time-making was strongly characterised by their privileged position, but also by their sense of loss and of being threatened by a rapidly changing society.

Old Livonia (Alt Livland) was a historical region consisting of the Baltic provinces of Livonia, Estonia and Courland (see Figure 1). German speakers had immigrated to these lands in several waves: first in the Middle Ages, when the lands of the Estonians, Latvians and Curonians were brutally colonised by the crusading German knights who had formed the Sword Brothers in 1202. In 1236 the Sword Brothers merged with the Teutonic Order, but retained autonomy as the Livonian Order. After 1710, German craftsmen and academics were invited by the Romanov sovereignty to rebuild the infrastructure of the Baltic provinces following the dramatic losses in population due to wars and the plague in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The nineteenth century, especially its first half, was a period when Baltic-German culture utterly thrived. But its societal dominance was increasingly challenged, by the russification politics of the Romanov sovereignty and by the growth of Estonian and Latvian nationalism in the second half of the century (Haltzel, 1981; Plath, 2014, 55–57).

Figure 1.

Map of the German-Russian Baltic Regions 1841.jpg.

Baltic Germans still constituted the economic, cultural and political elite in the 1830s, this article's starting point (Plakans, 2011: xiii, 170ff). However, as indicated by Poelchau and his anonymous opponent, and despite their societal privileges, Baltic Germans perceived themselves as inferior in the context of European history. While their self-perceived subordination appears provocative today, it is clear that the heyday of their Livonia had come to an end. In fact, Livonian history was filled with disruptive events that could not be ignored, from the emblematic fall of the German Livonian Order state (1558–1561) to the Great Famine of Estonia (1695–1697), the Great Nordic War (1700–1710/1721) and the plague (1710–1713) (Plath, 2014: 56). There had also been more recent threatening developments: Napoleon's invasion of Romanov Russia in 1812 and the emancipation of the enserfed peasantries (Plakans, 2011: 190). Dramatic historical developments went hand in hand with the loss of historiographical evidence that supported Baltic-German rule in the past, from written documents to fortifications. Thus, to the members of the GGuA and their peers, Livonian history and its chronological timeline emerged as fragmented, due to scattered and absent sources.

How were these challenges addressed? The main actors on the following pages are the founding members of the GGuA, particularly in the 1830s and 1840s, and a selection of historians occupied with downfall and loss in Livonian history in the second half of the nineteenth century. The GGuA's concern was the history of the Baltic provinces, which they referred to as their Heimat or Fatherland. The association dealt with both the history and prehistory of the provinces of Livonia, Estonia and Courland, or Alt Livland. ⁴ The initiative to form a provincial historical society had been taken in 1833, by German noblemen with prominent positions in the Romanov Russian administration of the Baltic provinces, as well as priests and other scholars with a strong interest in Baltic history. Its members were predominantly of German origin, but their historical interests were geographically rather than ethnically framed (Secretair, 1840: 3f). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, social categories that referred to language, ethnicity or nationality were rare in the Baltic provinces. For instance, the enserfed peasants hardly ever talked about themselves as Estonians or Latvians. By contrast, at the end of the eighteenth century the culture and history of the indigenous peoples had become objects of study for German-speaking scholars. Liberal scholars like Garlieb Merkel, who sympathised with the Latvians and criticised the German landowners, were not unusual. While learned societies like the GGuA were theoretically open to Estonians and Latvians, in practice this was only possible if they embraced German as their scientific language (Plakans, 2011: 172–175). As more peasants gained access to higher education over the nineteenth century, there was a heated debate as to whether or not they should be Germanised. Even Merkel (d. 1850), towards the end of his life, felt that educated Estonians and Latvians constituted a potential threat (Plakans, 2011: 207). In conclusion, then, and although many liberal scholars were in favour of emancipating the peasants, it is difficult to ignore that the former considered themselves entitled to indigenous culture and history.

It is this entitlement, here expressed through Baltic-German scholars’ making and organisation of Livonian time, and their interest in separating it from other times, that is examined in what follows. The analysis of these time-binding practices is structured around three themes: firstly, Livonian time-making as a means of preserving and clarifying colonial power structures. Drawing on the discussed scholarship that has emphasised temporal multiplicity and synchronisation in the modern era, the following emphasises the conflicts between different layers and durations that characterised Livonian time and how these were linked to the rise and fall of German political autonomy in the Baltic colonies. Secondly, the article explores the material underpinning of these times through the “irrefutable evidence” that Poelchau invoked. This means that the source collecting by the GGuA and their establishment of provincial historiographical collections are analysed. The article argues that time-binding collecting practices and the time-controlling organisation of historiographical evidence in institutions were necessary in Baltic-German attempts to manifest and master their version of Livonian time and history. Lastly, the article scrutinises how absent and lost materiality affected Livonian time-making. Source collecting could lead to an undesirable realisation of just what of the past was missing, if interruptions in the material chronologies of evidence were discovered (Hagström Molin, 2022, pp. 131–132). In conclusion, the article highlights how these temporal ruins became some of the most prominent features of Livonian time and history from the perspective of Baltic-German scholars.

Establishing Livonian time and pre-time

The GGuA was founded in 1834, in a time that contemporary history enthusiasts themselves referred to as the “age of associations” (Crane, 2000: 81). This growing interest in history and the creation of historical societies in Europe – from the newly fragmented German lands, France and Romanov Russia to the Nordic countries – motivated the formation of the GGuA (Napiersky, 1840: 61–63). There were also sources of inspiration closer to home: in 1815 a scholarly society for Courlandian art and literature had been established, and three years later a provincial museum opened in Mitau (Jelgava) (Weiss, 1986: 121–122). Unlike the Courlandian association, the GGuA was dedicated exclusively to history, and of all three Baltic provinces. The founding members explicitly stated that their main concern was to save Livonian history from ruin. This was to be done through the collecting and exhibiting of different kinds of monuments (Denkmäler) like deeds, manuscripts and other material culture, and by publishing scholarship dealing with the history of the Baltic provinces. To achieve this, the society established a museum and library in Riga (Secretair, 1840: 3, 7–8). Along with these collections, the society's core activities included regular meetings with lectures and the publication of the journal Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte Liv-, Ehst- und Kurlands (Notices from the field of the history of Livonia, Estonia and Courland). For almost a hundred years – 1840 to 1939 – the journal published lectures, essays, notifications, important sources dealing with the history of the provinces, and notes on the history of the society itself (Garber, 2007: 88). According to its first issue (1837, part of the 1840 volume), the GGuA's members comprised a total of 126 men, of whom five were honourary members and 82 founding members (Secretair, 1840: 17–27).

In the first years of the GGuA, several lectures and publications helped to define the line between German, Christian Livonian time and history on the one hand and indigenous prehistory on the other, and offered sources that supported both. At the society's inauguration ceremony in December 1834, the priest and historian Carl Eduard Napiersky gave a lecture that provided its members with an overview of historical works and primary sources of Livonian history. He started with medieval chronicles available in print and continued up to the historiography of his own time. The oldest known chronicle was the Heinrici Chronicon Livoniae (Henry's Livonian Chronicle), written in Latin by a German called Henry of Livonia who had served the third bishop of Riga and founder of the Sword Brothers, Albert von Buxthoevden (Napiersky, 1840: 64ff). ⁵ In Napiersky's days, Henry was believed to have been a Latvian native who had been christened and educated. However, later in the nineteenth century it was established that Henry had been born in Magdeburg and served Bishop Albert from an early age (Johansen, 1953: 7). The first source in German was a rhymed chronicle that described the deeds of the Teutonic Order in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. ⁶ Regarding the rest of the “dark Middle Ages,” as Napiersky phrased it, similar chronicles were absent due to feuds between the priesthood and the knights. It was only after the Reformation that a clergyman in Reval (Tallinn) wrote a chronological history of the provinces, this time entirely in Low German (Napiersky, 1840: 64ff).

To Napiersky and his fellows, Livonian time, as well as history, clearly began with the German colonisation of the provinces in the second half of the twelfth century, and the Sword Brothers’ violent missionary endeavour that followed. Napiersky's talk was published in the first issue of Mittheilungen, which also contained contributions that partly or wholly dealt with Livonian prehistory; that is, the period before the German colonisation (Mittheilungen, 1840). One article dealt with the construction and destruction of the German knights’ castles and another with prehistoric antiquities (Altertümer), while a third text dealt exclusively with a recent archaeological finding of bronze objects. In August von Löwis's extensive article on the knights’ castles he proclaimed 1158 to be the emblematic year when Livonian history began, when German merchants arrived from Bremen, some of whom in time came to settle in Livonia. He described the first German Christian missionary, Meinhard, as gentle and wise, and made Bishop Albert of Riga into the founder of the Livonian state, which was “independent for centuries” (von Löwis, 1840: 183–187). ⁷

To von Löwis, Livonian time before the arrival of the Germans was interestingly a period with very few time markers, and he underlined that this period relied on fragmentary sources. His prehistory, literally “pre-time” in German (Vorzeit), had no chronological indications before the fortress Juriev was built around 1030 by a Kievan Rus’ ruler, to whom the Estonians paid tribute. However, he underlined that the Estonians, Livonians and Curonians did not subject themselves to any master but rather lived in unbridled freedom (von Löwis, 1840: 179–185). With the Germans came Christianity, and their political infrastructure in the shape of castles, which von Löwis and his fellows saw as features necessary for a state. With them, Livonian time could begin. In Georg von Rennenkampff's article on Nordic and Livonian antiquities from “pre-Christian time,” the tone is somewhat different. The so-called pagan era is romanticised, and the violence of Christian crusaders is emphasised. Still, Livonian antiquity is dealt with without direct time markers, except that the period is discussed in relation to ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, from which Livonia explicitly differed (von Rennenkampff, 1840: 316ff). In the following four volumes of Mittheilungen, published between 1842 and 1850, the articles and source excerpts primarily contributed to manifesting German Livonian history, with a few prehistoric exceptions. ⁸

While the lands of the Estonians, Latvians and Curonians had once been brutally colonised by German Christians, Livonian time was made and claimed by the members of the GGuA in the 1830s and 1840s. It was the arrival of German civilisation in the Baltic province that had enabled chronological time and begun history. Not only was Livonian pre-time ephemeral; it was not even organised in a manner equally clear to how the time of the Livonian Order state was – which was facilitated by the medieval chronicles that had survived. This can be related to what Jordheim has argued: that the principal power of synchronising time lies in standardising it and making it valid to all in society (Jordheim, 2014: 513). Remarkably, in the time synchronisations of the members of the GGuA that were communicated to the public, it was the very distinction of different times that made their power claims most evident. Livonian time and history, however, required more irrefutable evidence in order to persist and be convincing. Lecture activities and Mittheilungen became the mediums through which the GGuA could communicate their joint efforts to map and spread news and inventories of Livonian sources of time and history in Romanov Russia as well as abroad. These activities, together with their creation of a library and a museum, are considered in the following.

Establishing time-binding collections

According to the new scientific approach to history, Livonian time, like all historical times, depended on material monuments of all sorts: the Denkmäler. Susan Crane has emphasised that the historical knowledge of monuments could only be preserved and utilised if the objects were collected and organised. Scattered history was not useful. In the German lands, the source-edition project Monumenta Germaniae historica, initiated in 1819, had underlined that textual monuments were considered to be more important than other historiographical objects. Furthermore, associations such as Deutsche Alterthümer claimed that it had been difficult to merge different categories of sources into a historical entity (Crane, 2000: 82–83). The founders of the GGuA had also been involved in source-edition projects before the society was established; for instance, Napiersky was responsible for the Monumenta Livoniae antiquae 1833–1835 (Garber, 2007: 92–93). But the time-making and source collecting of the GGuA in Riga differed from that of the associations in the German lands due to the Baltic Germans’ colonial past. The separation of Livonian time from the land's indigenous pre-time helped to structure evidence in text (post-German arrival) versus non-text (and thus pre-civilised time) categories. That said, von Löwis's comprehensive article on castles shows that there was great interest in German material culture, including material structures that had been completely lost.

In addition to the broad collecting of monuments by historical associations in nineteenth-century Europe, archival documents and collections were rapidly centralised in national archives (Cook, 2013: 105). Sina Steglich (2021) has argued that the public national archives of the nineteenth century came to embody the nation's time. In this way, national archives helped archivists and historians as well as ordinary people to conceptualise national time as a linear, homogenous, progressive history of the nation-state. In an era of increasing temporal pluralisation and denaturalisation of time, Steglich has concluded, national archives became important spaces where time could be renaturalised, simplified and presented in a uniform way (Steglich, 2021: 336). A centralised Livonian archive which corresponded to a national archive did not exist in the 1830s and 1840s; this was a provincial problem. However, through mapping and providing information about geographically scattered Livonian sources, Livonian time could still be materially underpinned. Therefore, an important mission of the GGuA was to spread knowledge about what kind of sources of Livonian history existed both in and outside the Baltic provinces. In the 1830s this was still unclear. Whether it was unseen documents in private collections or artefacts hidden in the earth, they all needed to be brought together. Napiersky stressed this in his speech in 1834 – that what was known then was not enough. Especially in the case of deeds, many still needed to be discovered, collected, ordered and reviewed for Livonian history to be properly established (Napiersky, 1840: 64ff). Napiersky said that even though Livonian history had been written, the primary source material that had been used was too limited, and it was necessary to improve this. When the history of the Middle Ages was researched, especially that involving the German people, this scholarship had to rely on deeds (Urkunden, Napiersky, 1840: 79). Napiersky's concern reflected that the ideals of the new science of history had taken hold in the Baltic provinces.

Napiersky underlined that the Baltic provinces did have source collections (Urkundensamlungen) at hand: the first archive that he mentioned was that of the Livonian Knighthood (Archiv der Livländischen Ritterschaft). However, due to war, plague and horrible political conditions in the past, many original documents had been lost. This made copies and old source compilations precious, and Napiersky especially acknowledged the work of the Swedish historian Thomas Hiärne (d. 1638) and the many copies of documents in the archive of the Teutonic Order in Königsberg, made on behalf of and at the expense of the Livonian Knighthood between 1809 and 1816. The latter collection, according to Napiersky, was extremely rich and filled with new information. A first source edition with a careful selection of the most important material had already been published, and a second was about to be. Other collections that Napiersky mentioned were the respective archives of the city councils of Riga and Reval, the city library of Riga's manuscript collection, the archive of the Estonian Knighthood and the provincial museum of Courland in Mitau. He also emphasised that the private archives and collections of the nobility contained important historiographical sources, which needed to be compiled for Livonian history to develop towards completeness. In this way, he encouraged his audience to make their private holdings available (Napiersky, 1840: 80–86).

From the beginning, Mittheilungen included several contributions that introduced its readers to collections and sources of Livonian history outside the Baltic provinces. For instance, Napiersky reported on sources of Livonian history in collections in St Petersburg, and his colleague von Busse informed readers of the same in the Rumjanzew museum (Napiersky, 1842: 81–102; von Busse, 1842: 103–132). The GGuA was also in contact with institutions outside Romanov Russia, and received information about Livonian sources from, for instance, the Royal Archive in Cracow and the Royal Library in Stockholm (Secretair, 1842: 547–548). With original sources of Livonian history scattered across Europe, in both accessible institutions as well as more inaccessible private collections, Mittheilungen became a very important medium for the dissemination of sources and information about them. In this way, a potential centralised Livonian archive and chronological timeline could be conceptualised.

The creation of the GGuA's library and museum in 1834 was one way of trying to compensate for the lack of a Livonian archive, and through these collections, Livonian time was also manifested. The library was established with the explicit intention of it becoming a complete collection of all the printed and handwritten works dealing with the history, prehistory and literary history of the Baltic provinces in the widest sense. This included the auxiliary sciences (palaeography, epigraphy, diplomatics, sigillography, archival science, chronology, heraldry, numismatics, genealogy) and, notably, geographic and topographic descriptions of the provinces were also included. ⁹ Thus, the scope of the library reflects the fact that the idea of Heimat history involved more than simply the chronology of the Livonian Order. It was grounded in and affected by the earth. Anja Oesterhelt has underlined that the Heimat concept was integrated in all sciences rather than just history. In time, the subject of homeland knowledge (Heimatkunde) was also introduced and taught in schools in German-speaking lands, including the Baltic provinces (Hollander 1924; Oesterhelt, 2021: 428–429). That the GGuA's understanding of history was driven by the idea of Heimat was distinct in that they welcomed donations to the library which concerned geographical and topographical descriptions. This together with those that would be expected, that further explained certain historical facts, the characterisation of an age and individual biographies, along with evaluations of historical objects, manuscripts and printed historical works and the like (Secretair, 1840: 9–10).

When the GGuA's museum was established, it contained a variety of objects divided into numismatic, diplomatics, epigraphy, heraldry, graphics and sculpture, archaeology, and genealogy departments. Members of the GGuA, and later other visitors, were able to experience and study coins and medals minted in the Baltic provinces or by their rulers, deeds and archival documents related to individuals and families of the provinces, inscriptions, coats of arms, and seals of individuals, offices and cities; chart plans, diagrams, drawings and portraits; all kinds of antiquities, sacred as well as profane; and finally, genealogical charts with related documents (Secretair, 1840: 8–9). Various kinds of archival documents were to be exhibited in the museum alongside other objects, which can be linked to Sina Steglich's notion of the archival museums that were established in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century and their materialisations of national time (Steglich, 2021: 244). Most importantly, in the order of this museum, as it was presented in Mittheilungen in 1840, Baltic-German Livonian time and history took priority over indigenous Livonian prehistory.

The GGuA's institutionalisation of Livonian time, however, cannot be seen as a national project. It was a provincial elite's manifestation of authority lost, and at the same time a legitimisation of the societal privileges they still enjoyed.

The collections of the GGuA were initially limited, and it took time for the society to find suitable premises for them. For the first ten years, the association and its collections were housed in Riga Castle. They then moved twice before being given appropriate premises in the Riga Dom in 1890. ¹⁰ In the meantime, the collections had grown significantly. The GGuA published a guide to the public Dom Museum in 1891, according to which the first room – the grand meeting room that the society shared with three other scholarly societies – exhibited portraits of prominent members along with paintings of Riga. The second room was dedicated to material culture connected to the German colonisation and urbanisation of the provinces, such as craftmanship and architectural remains from Riga and Wenden (Cēsis) (Führer, 1911: 1–12). Consequently, the materiality of German Livonian time continued to have precedence over indigenous prehistory. However, the archaeological material, which was exhibited in the third room, was presented primarily according to Christian chronology (and place of finding), starting with the oldest time (Aelteste Zeit) and followed by “the first period to the eight[h] century after Christ,” the second period starting with the eighth century, and the next with the fifteenth century (Führer, 1911: 13–24).

According to Steglich (2021), public national archives had a time-controlling capacity in the sense that they helped archivists, historians and ordinary people to conceptualise national time as a linear, homogenous, progressive history of the nation-state. When we compare this with the time-binding practices of the GGuA practised through the Dom Museum in Riga, a much more hierarchical and intentionally differentiated timeline appears. The chronological time of Old Livonia and its German state had precedence, and it is equally clear that the monuments to German civilisation were perceived as more valuable than anything else. Already in the 1830s, German heritage had been separated from traces of the indigenous peoples’ past, and this was then manifested through the order of the museum. If the collected timelines of successful nations were pointing to the future – a future that belonged to the nation – the Baltic-German historians could only look back, to a time that had been their golden age. Monica Baár has stressed that both glorious and tragic eras served their purposes for national historians in the nineteenth century. In their progress-driven narratives, the ultimate goal was national independence. The characteristics of a historical golden age often resonated with contemporary concerns (Baár, 2010: 225–225). In light of this, the Baltic Germans’ concerns about their undignified history can be seen as reflecting their fears regarding contemporary developments. They could explore Livonian history, and they could materialise the time of their fallen state. But it was unlikely that it would ever exist again.

Times of decline, absence and loss

“But it is a tremendous misfortune to always be just a copy!,” the unknown author had declared in Der Refraktor (1836: 160). ¹¹ Fifty years later, in 1886, Alexander Buchholtz gave a speech on the history of the Baltic provinces at the GGuA's yearly meeting. He then highlighted a few particularities of Livonian history, which are still highlighted today by historians who study the history of the Baltic provinces: absent and lost sources. ¹² Crane has written extensively on the rhetoric of saving in connection to historiographical collecting in nineteenth-century Europe. The urge to collect and save monuments came partly out of inventories of lost and damaged Denkmäler (Crane, 2000: 38–41). While saving history from ruin was an outspoken purpose of the GGuA when the association was founded in 1834, the focus of their early activities was primarily to map Livonian sources. However, what had been lost due to invasions and repeated destruction instead became increasingly present in Livonian historiography over the course of the century.

The second half of the nineteenth century has been portrayed as the heyday of Baltic-German historiography (von Rauch, 1986). A significant part of this thriving scholarship was dedicated to the difficult themes of decline, absence and loss that marked out turbulent periods in the Livonian chronology. Even if this experience was shared by many European states and regions, these features seem to have become as vital to Livonian historiographers as the evidence that still existed. This was already apparent in von Löwis's study (1840) of the lost castles. In this work, he listed 26 cities and villages that had disappeared without a trace. The city of Kokenhusen, destroyed by the Polish army around 1700, was the most important of these (von Löwis, 1840: 299, 305–307). Von Löwis depicted the centuries of the Livonian Order's rule by as a stable era, followed by a messy period during which a castle could be sized by Swedes, Russians and Poles all in the same year (von Löwis, 1840: 284). With the ruin of the knights’ castles – their infrastructure of power – the evidence of German time and history was also vanquished. What ceased to exist in the landscape, however, could be traced in writings, and several historical documents proving that the town of Kokenhusen had once existed were also published in the first volume of Mittheilungen (1840: 131–164).

The subjects of Livonian downfall and loss were strengthened by several historiographical works from the 1860s and onwards, not least by one of the most famous Baltic-German historians, Carl Schirren. He strongly opposed the russification politics of the Romanov sovereignty, which eventually forced him into exile in Germany, where he would ultimately serve as a professor at Kiel University. A major part of his scholarship dealt with the Livonian Order, as he felt that their rule of Livonia represented Baltic independence (Lenz, 2011). In the summer of 1860, he travelled to Stockholm along with the collector and amateur historian Robert von Toll. Von Toll suspected that he had discovered something extraordinary in the Swedish National Archives: documents taken as spoils of war from Mitau Castle by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus in 1621. ¹³ Schirren was able to confirm von Toll's hunch and returned to Stockholm the following year to continue his research, financed by the Livonian Knighthood (Neander, 1986: 179–180). His archival work there resulted in several publications, for instance Verzeichnis livländischer Geschichtsquellen in schwedischen Archiven und Bibliotheken (1861–68), in which he presented large parts of the deeds that had once been abducted from Mitau (Hagström Molin, 2023: 52ff). This meant that significant sources supporting the Baltic-German state which had been regarded as lost had now been recovered.

Schirren dedicated most of his professional life to collecting and classifying sources of Livonian history, and he edited and published many works that contained Livonian evidence. Besides Verzeichnis, he issued several vast source editions dealing with the fall of independent Livonia, seen through evidence preserved in Sweden and Denmark (Quellen zur Geschichte des Untergangs livländischer Selbstängigkeit, 1861–1881). In the first part he presented 115 items of this history of decline in chronological order. In its introduction, Schirren wrote that since the decline of German Livonia between the years 1558 and 1561, “these German colonies have never again achieved political independence” (Schirren, 1861: iii). ¹⁴ Here, he also referred to the Swedish National Archives as a treasure trove (Fundgrube). Despite this, he later described his difficulties in conducting research in the same archive, due to an alleged disorganisation of the collections (Schirren, 1860: 297). Schirren was later followed by Theodor Schiemann, who in 1873 published a “register of lost documents from the old Livonian Order archives” (Regesten verlorener Urkunden aus dem alten livländischen Ordensarchiv). The Courlandian Society for Literature and Art had assigned Schiemann the mission of organising the scarce remains of the ducal archive in Mitau and of tracing documents that had been returned by the Swedish king in the 1680s. He also discussed whether or not an inventory of the haul taken by Gustavus Adolphus in Mitau in 1621 was complete (Hagström Molin, 2023: 74–76; Schiemann, 1873: v–vi). ¹⁵ Considering the amount of loss, and the downfall of the German rule, every single traceable document seemed to have been of interest to both Schiemann and Schirren.

Returning to Alexander Buchholtz's lecture, Ein baltisches cultur-historisches Museum, at the GGuA meeting in 1886: he began this talk by acknowledging several different kinds of loss. The list of lost treasures and collections was long, Buchholtz said. He mentioned the losses caused by war and plundering, and said that old Livonian treasures were therefore to be found in Russian monasteries as well as Swedish castles. However, he continued, this was the experience of many countries; and the same was true of fire and iconoclasm. What Buchholtz instead wanted to emphasise was all the historiographical objects that had left Baltic provinces by peaceful means, due to lack of interest and an almost completely absent “historical sense” (historische Sinn) among inhabitants. After this statement, Buchholtz gives an account of lost and scattered Livonian materialities, from cannons to collections of art and literature to archaeological burial finds (Buchholtz, 1887: 1–9). In Mittheilungen the same year (1886) lost and dislocated sources were covered by, for instance, Hermann Hildebrandt, who wrote about a lost book of missives from the fourteenth century, and Max Perlbach, who informed readers on Livonian deeds preserved in Erfurt (Mittheilungen, 1886: iii–iv). As Crane has expressed it, “what is lost is irretrievable, not collectible, not tangible, but remembered as a loss” (Crane, 2000: 42). In Baltic-German historiography, the recurring theme of loss concerned both political authority and the sources that underpinned it. In this way, the German Livonian time that started with colonisation and ended with downfall, together with a longer history of the province, came into being through both what was present and what was long gone.

Conclusion: ending Livonian time

The anonymous author of the letter published in Der Refraktor in 1836 had underlined how disgraceful Livonian history was and compared it to both a dying body and an abnormal foetus. Not unexpectedly, the author's scholarly contemporaries tried to prove these sentiments wrong. The members of the GGuA could find some greatness in the German colonisation and Christening of the Baltic provinces, and this was how Livonian time came into being. It was related to, but at the same time separated from, indigenous prehistory. Thus, the synchronisation of Livonian time with pagan pre-time expressed a colonial hierarchy: the civilised German timeline had priority and was kept apart from pagan pre-time, and the latter almost lacked a chronology and distinct order. The main issue, however, was that Baltic-German historians had to tackle the downfall of the Livonian Order and thus the end of German rule in the Baltic colonies. From their perspective this marked the end of Livonian time, but not of the region's history.

In the making of both Livonian time and history, Baltic-German historians had to take into account disruptive events and material loss. The sources that facilitated Baltic-German time-making were scattered, and a substantial number of them had been lost due to war, destruction and ignorance. Neither scientific historical time nor history could exist without the support of sources, organised in historiographical institutions. However, the Livonian case illuminates not only how much effort went into the time-binding practices of historians and their explorations of absent sources and lost monuments – it also emphasises how loss was turned into a central feature of the Livonian past, and allowed it to shape time and history. Colonisation marked the advent of Livonian time; decline and loss, its end. Relating this colonial time to a longer Livonian history, which included foreign conquests and Romanov rule, the making of Livonian time constituted an opportunity for Baltic-German scholars to manifest their past supremacy and their current privileges, which they felt entitled to.