„Restituierung der alten Zustände“ oder zukunftsweisende Neuerungen? Schulbildung und der soziale Aufstieg von Esten und Letten vornehmlich in Livland im kontroversen öffentlichen Diskurs (1860 bis 1914)
‘Restitution of the Old Way’, or New Goals for a Common Future? School Education and the Social Rise of Estonians and Latvians mainly in Livonia in Public Discourse, 1860 to 1914.

Summary/Abstract: In 1905, the year of revolutionary crisis, when the Russian government finally retreated from imposing the Russian language and culture on school education in the Baltic Provinces, German liberal journalists hoped for a new phase of a common regional school programme in Livonia. As can be seen from statements in newspapers as well as in pamphlets and books published between the 1860s and 1914, the Baltic German liberal cause was fairly soon driven into the defensive, mainly in fear of the zemstvo-institutions and the Russian residential press. After 1905, even liberal Germans finally lost the last of their support among the majority of Baltic Germans as well as among members of non-revolutionary Latvian and Estonian associations. The shift from a dominant Baltic German self-government to an almost total loss of power and control in matters of schooling encouraged hopes among leading Estonian and Latvian intellectuals that, with the help of the Russian press and state authorities, they might get rid of the German dominance in Livonia. Some Latvian activists, however, felt deceived when they realized that state authorities had nothing in mind but invigorating the Russian presence and power in Russia’s western borderlands. Others, for example the important representative of the Estonian Alexander School-movement, Heinrich Rosenthal, were not afraid of russification but instead were quite satisfied that the leading role of status-bound Baltic Germans had been weakened. Even liberal Baltic Germans could not find any true allies among fellow Latvian and Estonian citizens, mainly due to restrictive electoral concepts favoured by German representatives. After 1905, the Baltic German upper classes concentrated almost entirely on ethnic Germans re-establishing traditional German grammar schools. The newly founded German Unions justified their ethnic exclusiveness with arguments advocating that German and protestant culture be upheld in a Russian-orthodox world and gave up traditional values of a status-bound responsibility for all inhabitants of Livonia. As a matter of fact, these attitudes anticipated the forthcoming role of a German minority in the newly founded states of Estonia and Latvia after 1918.

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