Transcending boundaries: Riga’s Baltic German entrepreneurs in an era of nationalism, revolution, and war

ABSTRACT

Investigating the politics of merchants and entrepreneurs, this paper discusses how Riga’s economic elite reacted to the challenges of nationalism, revolution, and war and (re)defined themselves during and after World War One. Riga’s entrepreneurs had traditionally sought protection of their businesses by maintaining close relations with the Russian tsar. War and the Russian Revolution forced them to look for protection elsewhere. This paper argues that orientation toward the German Empire in 1917/18 was not so much the outcome of desired national belonging but of economic pragmatism. Spatial identity and the perception of belonging to the Baltics proved stronger than national affiliation to Germany.

KEYWORDS:

• Baltic Germans
• national indifference
• spatial identity
• Börsen-Comité
• Riga stock-exchange
• entrepreneurship
• economy

Acknowledgments

This research and the presentation of first drafts of this paper at international conferences have been supported by the European Studies Center and the Russian and East European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I am indebted to Andrejs Plakans and his presentation at the German Studies Association (GSA) annual conference in Kansas City in 2014 for this crucial differentiation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katja Wezel

Katja Wezel is DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She studied History and English at the universities of Heidelberg (Germany), University of Wales at Aberystwyth (UK) and EUSP St. Petersburg (Russia). In 2011, she received her PhD from Heidelberg University for a thesis on memory politics in post-Soviet Latvia. Katja Wezel’s research interests focus on nineteenth and twentieth century Baltic history and transnational, comparative approaches to the study of memory politics and cultural conflicts in Eastern Europe. She is author of Geschichte als Politikum. Lettland und die Aufarbeitung nach der Diktatur [History as Politics. Coming to Terms with the Past in Post-Soviet Latvia]. Other recent publications include ‘Loyalty, Minority, Monarchy: The Baltic German Press and 1905’ in The Russian Revolution of 1905 in Transcultural Perspective. Identities, Peripheries, And the Flow of Ideas ed. by Felicitas Fischer von Weikersthal et al. (Bloomington, In.: Slavica, 2013).