The end of P. Višinskis Street, which directs us to the door of the Church of the Resurrection, is framed by two private residential houses. As seen from the side of the church, these two modernists form a real modernist gate to the no less modernist quarters of Žaliakalnis, characterized by a wide variety of wooden and masonry architecture.

The house standing in the right corner of the street belonged to doctor Joanas Jofetas. It was built in 1937 and designed by architect Arnas Funkas. The character of the house of restrained architecture seems to be all concentrated in the corner of the plot: it is emphasized by a recessed corner entrance, the balconies of the house are open here, and due to the diagonal of P. Višinskio Street, the additional space is used by the semicircular volume of the staircase, which extends over two floors and is decorated with small windows.

Text by Žilvinas Rinkšelis

Photos by Žilvinas Rinkšelis, 2021.

Although this house could easily be attributed to the authorship of architect B. Elsbergas (at least some houses of a similar type and architecture can be seen right here in V. Putvinskio Street), it is a project of engineer G. Gumeniukas. Meanwhile, the existing similarities between such projects testify to the universal fashions and architectural tendencies of modernism at the time.

 

Photo of the house in 1956. Photo by J. Skeivys. Source: Kaunas University of Technology, archive of the Institute of Architecture and Construction. Photo source: www.autc.lt

 

The owners of the house were Marija Legeckaitė and Povilas Legeckas. The house was built in 1939. M. Legeckaitė was a doctor of gynecological diseases, so in this house she not only lived but also woked. Many well-known doctors of that time were settling in the prestigious V. Putvinskio Street. Interestingly, such neighborhood ties were maintained even after the war when the owners of these houses moved to the west. In 1959 a congress of Lithuanian doctors was organized in the United States of America, and former neighbors V. Tercijonas and P. Legeckas also met there, beyond the Atlantic.

Text by Žilvinas Rinkšelis

Photos by Ž. Rinkšelis, 2020.

Pranas Daunys – the leader of the blind people in Lithuanian

Pranas Daunys – the leader of the blind people in Lithuanian

Our country was only ten years old when the education of the Blind began in Kaunas. And what happened before 1928? Nothing, actually. Braille, created at the Paris Institute for the Blind, was approaching its 100th anniversary, while an institution of the same kind opened its doors in Kaunas only on 27th February 1928. Education for the visually impaired was delayed, but there were objective reasons for this, one of which was the loss of statehood at the end of the 18th century. By comparison, the Riga Institute for the Blind had been operating since 1878 and had an extensive library of Braille books. Earlier, in 1818, the Königsberg Institute for the Blind was established. The blind from Lithuania studied at both institutes. One of them was Pranas Daunys, a volunteer in the fight for the independence of Lithuania, during which he had lost sight; he was a pioneer of the movement of the Blind in our country.

Pranas Daunys is a writer, a pianist, and a volunteer of the Lithuanian Armed Forces; a pioneer of organized activities for the Lithuanian Blind, also, a compiler of the Lithuanian Braille alphabet. He was born in Panevėžys in 1900. In June 1919, at the urging of the priest Pranas Turauskis, he became a volunteer in the Lithuanian Armed Forces and in his free time after the service taught illiterate soldiers to write. Unfortunately, Pranas was seriously injured in the head by exploded grenade in the battle with the Polish partisans, in the village of Avižoniai near Širvintai on January 6, 1923. After the injury he lost his sight and, in part, his hearing. The personal disaster led to that an active citizen started taking care of people of similar destiny. In the summer of 1926, he organized the Lithuanian Congress of the Blind and actively participated in it. Pranas Daunys adapted the Braille alphabet to the Lithuanian language. His reports were used to compile the curriculum of Kaunas Institute for the Blind: general education subjects, music, and craft teaching. In 1927, P. Daunys was also the first Lithuanian blind man, whoparticipated in the International Congress of the Blind.

General education subjects, music and crafts were taught at the newly established Kaunas Institute for the Blind. It was a four-grade school with a greatly expanded primary school curriculum and an enhanced music program. Fifteen years after its founding, the institute had grown to eight-grade school, and later, to a secondary school for the blind. In 1944, the first eighth-grade students finished the institute, and, in 1955, the first graduates. It is interesting that almost all students of that program enrolled in higher education institutions (this was a rare case in Lithuania at the time) and successfully finished them. The Pranas Daunys Education Centre is currently housed in the former premises of the Institute for the Blind. Not only visually impaired children are educated here, but also children with severe complex disabilities and developmental disorders.

 

Photo of Pranas Daunys. Photo source: www.kuktiskes.lt

 

Memorable moments of the activity

The Institute for the Blind was officially established in 1927 and began its real activities in the first academic year on February 28, 1928. A relief map of Lithuania became the first special teaching tool at the institute, and in 1930, when the printing house was installed next to the educational institution, the first Lithuanian book in Braille was published. It was the first-class elementary “Mūsų šviesa”. According to the data of the first census conducted in 1935, 2983 blind people were registered in Lithuania (excluding Vilnius and Klaipėda regions). Another important date is 1937, when a new building of the institute opened its doors. The administration of the institute, classrooms and a dormitory moved to it from the old wooden building. The new school was designed for one hundred students. 300 000 litas was spent on its construction and the money was received from the state lottery. The author of the project is an architect Stasys Kudokas, at that time he was a famous designer of schools, public and private buildings. Due to specifics of the school, corners of walls in the corridors near the rooms, where a larger number of students gather, had been rounded for safety reasons.

As traffic intensified, the crossroad of Tvirtovės Alley and Savanoriai Avenue near the school became one of the busiest in the city. In 1975, an underground passage was built there, the design and construction of which was financed by the Lithuanian Society of the Blind. Through this underground passage, the Blind can safely walk from school to the residential homes, libraries, shops, and trolleybus stops. It is also interesting that the school played an important role in the events of January 13, 1991. After the Soviet army seized the Lithuanian Radio and Television premises and the Vilnius Television Tower, the radio moved to the sound recording studio of the Lithuanian Union of the Blind and Visually Impaired. Thanks to this, the broadcast of the first radio program was successfully resumed the following evening.

Text by Medeinė Rainytė

 

Sources of information:

LASS istorija. Lietuvos aklųjų ir silpnaregių sąjungos interneto svetainė.

Kauno Prano Daunio aklųjų ir silpnaregių ugdymo centras. Wikipedia. 

Kauno Prano Daunio ugdymo centro interneto svetainė.

A. Valenta, Aklųjų švietimo 90-metis: iš praeities į ateitį. lrytas.lt, 2018-03-13.

G. Strankauskienė, „90 sėkmės metų“. Lietuvos aklųjų švietimui – 90. In „Mūsų žodis“, 2018 m. 

Pranas Daunys. Wikipedia. 

Photos by M. Rainytė, 2020.

A small architectural element

In the botanical garden of Kaunas, established in 1923, we can find not only plant collections, but also various types of heritage objects that have appeared in the territory during different historical periods. The garden was created in the state-owned Freda manor, which consisted of a park and a palace ensemble created in the early 19th century. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, fortification objects of Kaunas Fortress appeared in the park. Finally, during the first years of independence, the objects and elements of the infrastructure of the botanical garden were built: greenhouses, orangery, pergola. Although we count thousands of buildings built in the Provisional Capital and with modernist features in Kaunas, we cannot boast of the same abundance of small architectural attributes created or preserved. Therefore, the architectural objects that appeared in the Botanical Garden of Vytautas Magnus University during the interwar period are interesting not only in their history, but also in different functional types. And we could attribute the bridge of the park to the few surviving examples of small architecture with modernist features.

 

Visitors from Pasvalys gymnasium in Kaunas Botanical Garden, 1939. Photo from the archive of Kaunas Botanical Garden.

 

A talented engineer

Although this is a popular object of the walking route and a place to take photos, we know quite little about its history. The bridge over the water, gives us a path straight to an island with a hut on it. The author of the project is engineer Antanas Vytautas Daniūnas. After spending his childhood in Pilypai village, Anykščiai district, he graduated in Ukmergė gymnasium. After that A. Daniūnas went to Kaunas to study in Vytautas Magnus University, Faculty of Engineering, which he finished in 1939, holding a diploma of a civil engineer. The talented engineer was offered to stay to work at the university, but in the same year he went to work in Zarasai. It is believed that the bridge of the botanical garden, which appeared around 1938 or 1939, could be one of its first projects, perhaps created while still studying at university. The topic of Antanas’ diploma work was dedicated to reinforced concrete buildings of military airfield, but the topic of bridges also remained familiar both due to the chosen specialty and the implemented works – he is credited with the authorship of the reinforced concrete bridge over Šventoji in Ukmergė.

 

The author of the project Antanas Vytautas Daniūnas is sitting on the railings of the bridge, during the opening, 1939(?). Photo from the personal archive of R. Pačinskas.

 

After a year spent in Zarasai, in 1940 A. Daniūnas returned to work at the expanding university. He became a junior assistant at the Department of Structural Statics of Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University, Faculty of Engineering. In 1943, the engineer was arrested by the German Gestapo, accused of anti-German activities, and taken to the Stutthof concentration camp. A year later it was decided to transport A. Daniūnas back to Lithuania, but along the way the imprisoned engineer died in Ragainė prison.

Text by Žilvinas Rinkšelis

Photos of Kaunas Botanical Garden.

Early Holy See representation in Kaunas

Marta Engelman started building a two-storey brick house designed by Moisijus Segalovskis in 1911, having bought a parcel of land with the property from its previous owner Antanas Rabašauskas. In 1912, the house was already occupied and rented out. When it was built, the buildings closed off an inner courtyard, which was then accessed via an entry point and a garden. After the declaration of independence in 1919, the house was purchased by Abraham and Ida Kacai, who owned it until the 1940s.

As the city became the capital of the country, several public institutions started setting in surrounding streets. During the reconstruction of K. Donelaitis Street in 1931, the face of the house changed one more, and the last, time. Interestingly, this change was partly, if not entirely, related to the street improvement works. The work involved excavating some of the soil and lowering the street, therefore, the foundations of nearby houses went down as well. Moreover, the walls started to crack, which led to the need for additional reinforcement of the foundations. Furthermore, in 1931, the final adjustments were made to the facades of the house according to a design by B. I. Bloch: the western part of the house was raised (the house became asymmetrical) when a first floor was built up, the staircase doorway was moved down, and an empty space was used to install a skylight.

Conveniently located in the city, the newly renovated house did not escape the eye of the diplomatic missions: from 1928 to 1939, the two second-floor apartments were rented to the Apostolic See or the Vatican Nunciature. Thanks to the splendid state palaces and banks built between the two world wars, today the building looks a little less impressive, but it without a doubt remains an important part of the diplomatic legacy of Kaunas. Dignitaries of the Holy See and the Lithuanian state visited and worked in the building, including representative of the Holy See to Lithuania, Prelate Luigi Faidutti (buried in the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Kaunas), representatives of the government of the Republic of Lithuania, diplomats, and the clergy. In 1931, a modern villa was built on the adjacent V. Putvinskis Street, the first building designed specifically for a diplomatic mission. The Vatican Nunciature was just about to move in with its new envoy Riccardo Bartoloni. Unfortunately, due to a change in political circumstances, the nuncio never moved in, and the building was turned into a children hospital.

What is more, the building is a representative of the moderate modernist style that is a rare thing to find in Kaunas. The facade of the building has been recently renovated, with a darker and rougher sand and lime plaster on the wall planes and lighter coloured detailing. Unfortunately, the fence and vases that crowned a roof have not survived to this day. However, the authentic staircase and doors have been preserved, as well as the original layout of some of the apartments, parquet flooring and windows. In 2007, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Concordat between the Holy See and the Republic of Lithuania, a commemorative plaque was unveiled on the building. The community is currently seeking to have the building added to the list of cultural assets to be protected.

Text by Žilvinas Rinkšelis

 

Sources of information:

Greetings to Rita, the resident of the house for collecting and sharing the information!

Photos by Ž. Rinkšelis, 2020.

Undeservedly forgotten

While Jokūbas Peras is not among top ten architects of interwar Kaunas modernism, he certainly deserves attention. The architect of Jewish origin was born in 1900 in Pašvitinis town, Pakruojis district. He graduated in Lithuania, survived the Holocaust and continued to design during the Soviet era. However, this sentence would be too laconic compared to his life and works that he created. Let’s examine all in detail.

 

House of businessmans M. Posvianskis and H. Klisas in Kaunas, designed by Jokūbas Peras. Photo by Gerardas Bagdonavičius, 1940s. Photo source: Šiauliai “Aušros” museum.

 

Between the wars, Kaunas became a humming construction site. Huge forces of architects and designers of that time were working in it. Just as the city was decorated with modern and attractive buildings, so the architect Jokūbas Peras was distinguished by original and fashionable projects of the time. His authorship includes not only one of the most expressive and beautiful residential houses in Kaunas on Vytautas Avenue, but also very minimalistic Bauhaus-like private house of Glemžos family. The first one, built in 1928 for businessmens M. Posvianskis and G. Klisas, still attracts a lot of attention. The other one, unfortunately, has been significantly changed. It was created in 1936 for Glemžos family. In terms of architecture, the house was no less interesting due to its architectural expression, which was extremely modern for its time and in the Lithuanian context, close to the Bauhaus tradition.

 

House of Glemžos family in Kaunas, designed by Jokūbas Peras. Photo source: M. K. Čiurlionis Nacional Museum of Art. 

 

He survived the Holocaust

There are many places in Kaunas where a lot of modernist buildings have been concentrated in one bunch. One such “island” is the area of ​​Trakų and K. Būgos Streets. Here you can find not only a large part of the residential buildings designed by Jokūbas Peras, but also the house of the architect himself. At the beginning of Trakų Street, in 1934 J. Peras built a family house. On the first floor settled his mother, and on the second – an architect with his wife Golda and two sons, Joram and Amos. It was in this same house that not only guests or customers were knocking on, but also World War II. Like most Kaunas Jews, in 1941 Perai were palced in Kaunas ghetto.

While living in the ghetto, the family heard about the massacre in Šiauliai and in 1943 they decided to escape from here. With the help of nurse Lidija Vadauskienė, Perai received forged identity documents with Lithuanian names. The family broke up. The Likevičiai family became the first patrons of Peras wife Golda and five-year-old son Amos. Golda Perienė left the city and hid, often changing places of residence. Meanwhile, Jokūbas Peras and his eldest son Joram hid in a furniture store in the Old Town of Kaunas. Together with two other Jews hiding here, they were spotted by a boy living in the neighborhood who informed about Soviet paratroopers hiding in a warehouse. The arriving police no longer found the refugees. After successfully escaping, Jokūbas and his son returned to L. Vadauskienė, and she took refuges with her sister Regina and her husband Antanas Tekorius, who lived in the city center.

 

Construction of Jokūbas Peras house, 1940s. Photo source: Lithuanian National Museum.

 

Over time, staying in the city became dangerous, so with the help of A. Tekorius, the refugees were transported to his farm near Telšiai. Jokūbas was introduced to a local farmer as a gardener who had escaped the bombings in the city. He stayed here with his son until 1944. At the end of the year the family met again.

“Lydia ran to Antanas Tekorius, her brother-in-law, and asked for help to save the Perai family from the ghetto. Antanas, without thinking for a long time, rushed to act, he managed to bribe a Gestapo officer and release Kaunas chief architect Jokūbas Peras and his eldest son Joram. It was not easy to get architect with his son on a train, and he had to be transported away from Kaunas. Along the way, the train attendant snorted into a black-eyed, dark-hair architect, and Antanas had to reassure a vigilant employee with a bottle of vodka. Jokūbas and Antanas became friends on that trip and decided to solve a difficult problem in a simple and playful way – he repainted the architect’s hair. Later, Jokūbas Peras was employed as a gardener by a farmer form Lingėnai village. While working in a flax factory, A. Tekorius brought in the materials from the factory so that J. Peras could exchange them for food.” Lithuanians who saved Jewish lives Antanas Tekorius (1893–1976) Matininkas, Lingėnai village, Telšiai district Awarded the Cross of Salvation. Dirva, 2011 m. liepos 25 d. 

After surviving the Holocaust, J. Peras continued to design during the Soviet era. He became an educator and died in 1973 in Vilnius. In post-war Kaunas, the architect designed the first block of apartment buildings of the Pergalė factory in Kaunas, KTU student dormitories in Vydūno Street, as well as an apartment building near Kaunas Central Post Office. Together with A. Lukošaitis, he participated in the competition in 1950 and prepared the project of the Vilnius Opera and Ballet Theater (not implemented). In 2002, the rescuers of J. Peras and his family – Antanas and Regina Tekoriai, as well as Lidija Vadauskienė – were awarded honorary titles of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Text by Žilvinas Rinkšelis

Sources of information:

„Lietuviai, išgelbėję žydų gyvybę Antanas Tekorius (1893–1976) Matininkas, Lingėnų kaimas, Telšių rajonas Apdovanotas žūvančiųjų gelbėjimo kryžiumi (1993).“ Dirva, 2011 m. liepos 25 d. 

Vadauskienė Lidija (Naglytė). The Righteous Among the Nations Database.

Photos by Ž. Rinkšelis, 2020.

House of famous public figures and citizens

If not for the rounded corners, the typical courtyard entrances, and the slate roof of the interwar period, you could think that you are looking at an almost typical post-war apartment block. However, it was designed by Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis, a famous architect of interwar Lithuania, and the four-storey house was home to several well-known citizens and public figures of the time.

 

Initial project of the J. Žemgulis house. Architect V. Landsbergis-Žemkalnis. Photo source: Lithuanian Archive of Literature and Art.

 

Originally, the house was designed by Juozas Žemgulys, a well-known surgeon of the interwar period, as a two-storey house. Once he arrived in Kaunas in 1919, Žemgulys started working at the state hospital. From 1923, he was a surgeon at Kaunas Military Hospital and was promoted to the rank of colonel for the Military Medical Service. The doctor also worked for a while as a chairman of the Lithuanian Red Cross, and in 1935, was transferred to Klaipėda. 

The doctor was not only a prominent surgeon, but also a public figure; he took part in the activities of the “Fraternitas Lituanica” corporation of medical students and doctors, was one of the co-founders of the Medical Society, and founded the Lithuanian Society of Surgeons. In the end, the house doubled in size, but retained the original architecture: the main volume of the building with three windows, behind which the rooms line up, and a slightly recessed smaller part of the house with the entrance on the first floor, the entrance into the courtyard, and two-roomed apartments (without a kitchen) intended for singles on top. 

 

J. Žemgulis house design. Architect V. Landsbergis-Žemkalnis. Photo source: Lithuanian Archive of Literature and Art.

 

It is likely that a house made of a few apartments in a convenient location was in demand. Karolis Gercas, the head of “Ūkio Bankas”, Jonas Kalnėnas, the editor of “Trimitas”, Julija Monstavičienė-Veličkaitė, a physician of internal and pulmonary diseases, Dionizas Monstavičius, an assistant of the Chamber of Appeals, Elena Pšigodskienė, a dentist, and Juozas Ratkevičius, the owner of cinema “Saturnas”, settled in the house. After Germany took over Klaipėda, the owner of the house moved to Panevėžys, where he worked in the local hospital. He was married to Leokadija Steponaitytė and they had five children together. However, in 1941, tragedy awaited the family. When the Soviet occupation began, J. Žemgulys was murdered in a hospital in Panevėžys, and his wife with children fled to the West in 1944.

Text by Žilvinas Rinkšelis

 

Sources of informtion:

O. Auškelaitė, Juozas Žemgulys. Iš: samogitia.mch.mii.lt

Greetings to Paulius Lazauskas for the information about the building!

Photos by Ž. Rinkšelis and M. Rainytė, 2020 m.

Pioneer of successful heart surgery

Walking down Trakai Street, we pass a large two-storey building located slightly away from the street with a spacious and green courtyard. If you come closer, you will notice the fence posts decorated with hearts: the house and a private hospital that belonged to Olga Gusevienė and her husband, Vitalijus Gusevas, a well-known interwar doctor. The owners with their daughters moved into the house in 1934 and lived there until the occupation of Lithuania in 1940. Russian-born Vitalijus Gusevas entered the history of Lithuanian cardiology as a renowned, highly skilled surgeon from Panevėžys who performed the first heart surgery in Lithuania.

In 1928, V. Gusevas performed the second surgery on a heart wound. A medical record No. 636 states that “a 32-year-old Lithuanian man, a cobbler, wanted to commit suicide while drunk, and injured himself with a cobbler knife”. The surgery was successful.

 

Personnel of Panevėžys County Hospital. V. Gusevas is the third person (looking from the left side) in the first row. Around 1928. Photo source: J. Viga Čiplytė, „Gyd.Andrius Domaševčius ir gyd.Vitalijus Gusevas – privačių ligoninių vedėjai. 1929 metai“. Iš viga.lt

 

Gusevas came to Panevėžys in 1920. For a while, he worked as the head of the Surgical Department of the Panevėžys County Hospital, as well as in the Jewish Hospital. In 1927, he opened the first private hospital in the city that held 8 patient beds. 

Around 1932, the doctor and his family moved to Kaunas. He opened and managed a new private surgical hospital in Trakai Street, where he also lived. In 1940, the former hospital building was nationalised, and after the war it was used for the establishment of the Kaunas Department of Gynaecology for Purulent Complications, then the Department of Obstetrics, and for the last 48 years the Department of Gynaecology. 

 

The house and private hospital of O. and V. Gusevai. Design of the building facade, author Stasys Kudokas, 1934. Photo source: „Laikinosios sostinės architektai“. Kauno apskrities viešosios bibliotekos virtuali paroda. 

 

Hospital and residential building

The architect who designed the building, Stasys Kudokas, had previous experience in designing private clinics and hospitals, the construction of which was initiated by well-known and very experienced doctors at the time. These institutions were usually used for residential purposes too; therefore, these buildings had apartments made for families of the founders.

The Gusevas Clinic is the only one that has retained its original function. Hospital design is divided into different areas: at the south end of the ground floor, a spacious five-room doctor’s apartment was built, along with three offices, a reception room, and a spacious staircase connecting all floors of the building. In the ascent situated on the northern side of the first floor, there was a surgery connected to the hospital wards by a spacious corridor.

Text by Medeinė Rainytė and Žilvinas Rinkšelis 

 

Sources of information:

J. Viga Čiplytė, „Gyd.Andrius Domaševčius ir gyd.Vitalijus Gusevas – privačių ligoninių vedėjai. 1929 metai“. Iš viga.lt

R. Juškienė, „Architekto Stasio kudoko kūryba Kaune“. Kauno istorijos metraštis, 2006, nr. 7.

Photos by M. Rainytė, 2020.

A person that linked Lithuania and Belarus during the interwar period

What is the connection between Kaunas, Belarus and the Belarusian national revival? All these things were linked by one person – architect Klaudijus Dušauskas Duž, who lived and worked in Kaunas between the wars.

Klaudijus Dušauskas was born in 1891 in Glubok, Belarus. He attended school in Vilnius, where he also got acquainted with the members of the Belarusian national movement and joined their ranks. After 1917, during the February Revolution in Russia, K. Dušauskas became a representative of the Central Council of Belarusian Organizations in St. Petersburg, cooperating with the largest Belarusian political force – the Belarusian Socialist Hramada (BSH). K. Dušauskas-Duž’s greatest merit for Belarus is the preparation of the country’s flag project: the white-red-white flag became popular among Belarusians after the February Revolution and was used by both civilian and military organizations.

A significant part of the Lithuanian biography of an architect began in 1924, when K. Dušauskas entered the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Lithuania in Kaunas.

 

Business card of architect K. Dušauskas-Duž. Source: Vytauto Didžiojo mirties 500 metų sukaktuvėms paminėti albumas. Kaunas, 1933 m.

 

K. Dušauskas graduated in 1927 and acquired the diploma of an engineer. One of the first works of K. Dušauskas – together with prof. Vladas Dubeneckis was a project for the building of the cinema “Metropolitain”.

Between 1930–1931 K. Dušauskas worked for the joint-stock company “Maistas”, where he took care of the development of infrastructure, built factories in Kaunas and other Lithuanian cities. Later, K. Dušauskas started working at the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Having held the position of the postal board’s for construction, he was designing the post offices and other buildings.

 

A project of the private house. Source: Kaunas County Archive, f. 218, ap. 2, b. 344, l. 14.

 

Author of residential houses

The design and construction of residential houses was also important part of K. Dušauskas’ architectural work. His works were designed according to the style of functionalism, most of the surviving buildings are in Žaliakalnis or in the center of Kaunas. The most valuable are the houses of Dr. Juozas Purickis and Jonas Aukštuolis (Aušros St. 1), as well as the houses of Žakevičienė (Trakų St. 8 and 10), Vladas Požela and Viktoras Rekaitis and the homestead of botanist L. Vailionis in Kaunas district. K. Dušauskas also designed his own house in Žaliakalnis.

After the occupation of Lithuania in 1940, K. Dušauskas-Duž was arrested as an active participant in the Belarusian national movement. During the Nazi occupation, he was hiding Jews in his home for several months, for which he and his wife were also arrested by the Gestapo. After the war, K. Dušauskas remained to work in Lithuania, but suffered from Soviet repressions and was imprisoned. He died in 1959 and was buried in Kaunas, Petrašiūnai cemetery.

Text by Ugnė Marija Andrijauskaitė

Photos by Ž. Rinkšelis, 2020.

A particle of Switzerland in Kaunas

For three hundred years, in the times of modern history, Lithuania and Switzerland have been united by little-known or forgotten ties: a lot of churches, monasteries and palaces in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were built and decorated by talented Swiss architects and sculptors. Among the many buildings designed by them is Pažaislis Monastery in Kaunas. And vice versa, for half a century, from 1895 to 1945, more than one and a half hundred Lithuanian students studied at the University of Friborg. Mainly Lithuanian clergymen, priests and historians.

Once again, close ties were established during the interwar period: in 1922 the Consulate of the Swiss Confederation was established in Kaunas; in the same year, after the establishment of the University of Lithuania (later Vytautas Magnus University), the second wave of Swiss creators and scientists came to our country. One of them, Konstantinas Rėgelis, founded the Kaunas Botanical Garden; Juozas Eretas founded the Lithuanian journalism agency ELTA; Alfred Senn was a Swiss linguist, lexicographer and famous Balticist, and Pranas Brender translated the Lithuanian anthem into Latin.

When Kaunas became the capital, diplomatic missions of various countries were established in the city. Their locations and addresses changed depending on the new, representative buildings emerging in the city. Today, a sign hangs on the house standing on K. Donelaičio Street, marked with the number 45. It marks the place of the Consulate of the Swiss Confederation. It was working here from 1938 to 1940. So, it is a place that embodies both Kaunas modernist architecture and diplomatic history, becoming a part of Switzerland in Kaunas.

Text by Žilvinas Rinkšelis

Photos by Ž. Rinkšelis, 2020.