Literary Klaipėda in the interwar period

The route “Literary Klaipėda between the Wars” invites you to take a walk around Klaipėda and get to know the memorable places in our city where writers, poets, publicists, and press workers lived and/or worked during the interwar period. The purpose of the route is to present well-known and, unfortunately, almost forgotten writers and publicists related to Klaipėda, who wrote in Lithuanian and/or German. Everyone knows the name of Ieva Simonaitytė. There are many signs commemorating the writer in Klaipėda. The memorial plaques dedicated to Antanas Venclova, Salis Šemeris, Henrikas Radauskas, Ignas Šeinius, Martynas Jankus, Butkų Juzė,and  Petras Tarasenko speak about their Klaipėda period. There is a monument to Vydūnas… And where to look for traces of Mikas Otonas Gudaitis, Gustavas Juozupaitis, Jonas Užpurvis, Ansas Bruožis or Vilius Gaigalaitis?

What do we know about Rudolf Naujoks, Erich Karschies, Ewald Swars, Alfred Brust, who wrote in German and shed great love for their native land in their works? What brought Paul Bock to Klaipėda? For many people this is a kind of terra incognita… It’s mainly because only a small part of their works is translated into Lithuanian, and often just excerpts. However, only from their works we can get to know the Klaipėda region that no longer exists. Their works were read by memelanders, who had to leave their homeland… One of them is Bruno Le Coutre, whose  “The memories of Klaipėda of  1900 – 1939” published in Lithuanian in 2014 reveal our multi-colored and multi-layered city, where German, Lithuanian, and Jewish cultural traditions were interwoven, the cultural societies of these communities were active, and literature was of great importance. While walking along this route, you will not only learn a lot about specific personalities – creators of literature, but also about publishing houses, libraries, schools, where literary works were presented and at the same time the literary taste of readers was formed.

The route covers 21 object and presents 32 writers, publicists, and publishers. You will cover about 5 km while traveling and it will take up to 1.5 hours.