Weaving a Family and a Nation Through Two Latvian Looms

Abstract

This article demonstrates the ways in which some post-Second World War Latvian refugees maintained a sense of ‘cultural nationalism’ across two generations. Using object biography, I interweave the stories of the Apinis family and two weaving looms created in German Displaced Persons camps after the Second World War that are now in the collections of Museum Victoria and the Latvians Abroad: Museum and Research Centre. When the Australian-born daughter ‘returned’ to her parent’s homeland, she was forced to confront the gap between her family’s memories and the memories of people who had remained in Latvia after the war.

Keywords:

• Refugees
• cultural nationalism
• return migration
• memory
• object biography
• museum

Notes

1. MV, RF 629, M Auliciema, Translation of interview with Apinis family 6 October 1997, 3 November 2006, 22.

2. Ibid., 11.

3. Pearce, On Collecting, 170.

4. Gosden and Marshall, “The cultural biography of objects,” 169.

5. Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” 68.

6. Crane, “Introduction,” 2.

7. Ibid.

8. Dudley, Materialising Exile, 160.

9. Dudley, Materialising Exile, 160.

10. Karlsone, “The Creation of Ethnicity,” 134–135.

11. Lacombe, “Nationalism and Education,” 309 & 323–324.

12. Hilton, “Cultural Nationalism in Exile,” 287.

13. MV, RF 629, M Auliciema, Translation of interview with Apinis family 6 October 1997, 3 November 2006, 3.

14. Apinis-Herman, Latvian Weaving Techniques, 9.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. LAMRC, “Weaver Elga Kivicka”.

18. Lacombe, “Nationalism and Education,” 320.

19. Culture Victoria, The Apinis Loom.

20. Hilton, “Cultural Nationalism in Exile,” 280.

21. Ibid., 287.

22. Ibid., 281–82.

23. Hobsbawm & Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, 1.

24. Hilton, “Cultural Nationalism in Exile,”287.

25. Ibid., 282–86.

26. Dudley, Materialising Exile, 157.

27. Turan, “Material Memories,” 174.

28. Apinis-Herman, Latvian Weaving Techniques, 9.

29. Parkin, “Mementoes as Transitional Objects,” 305.

30. Apinis-Herman, Latvian Weaving Techniques, 9.

31. Dudley, Materialising Exile, 162.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. MV, RF 629, Certificate from the Latvian National Committee, D.P. Camp Memmingen, 6 September 1949.

35. LAMRC, Weaver Elga Kivicka.

36. Ibid.

37. Woodbridge, UNRRA, 529.

38. MV, RF 629, Certified copy of Certificate No. 126, from the IRO, 29 December 1948.

39. Kunz, Displaced Persons, 43.

40. Tavan, The Long, Slow Death of White Australia, 32.

41. Ibid., 33–35.

42. Kunz, Displaced Persons, 42.

43. Apinis-Herman, Latvian Weaving Techniques, 9.

44. MV, RF 629, M Auliciema, Translation of interview with Apinis family 6 October 1997, 3 November 2006, 32–34.

45. Hinkle, “Latvian-Americans in the Post-Soviet Era,” 52.

46. Schamberger, “Weaving women’s lives.”

47. Apinis-Herman, Latvian Weaving Techniques, 9–10.

48. Ibid.

49. Interview with Anita Apinis-Herman.

50. Galbally, Migrant Services and Programs, 1–2.

51. Australian Bicentennial Authority, How to Make it Your Bicentenary.

52. Apinis-Herman, Latvian Weaving Techniques, 9.

53. Interview with Anita Apinis-Herman.

54. LAMRC, “Anita Apine-Hermane today.”

55. Interview with Anita Apinis-Herman.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Ibid.

59. Crane, “Introduction,” 2.

60. Tout-Smith, “Contemporary Craft & Cultural Identity,” 207.

61. Interview with Anita Apinis-Herman.

62. Ibid.

63. Hage, White Nation, 121.

64. Kyriakopoulos, “Stitches in Time,” 49.

65. MV, RF 629, Exhibition Text.

66. Hage, “Migration, Food, Memory, and Home-Building,” 420–21.

67. Interview with Anita Apinis-Herman.

68. Ibid.

69. MV, RF 629, Executive Management Team Meeting Submission, Subject: Deaccessioning of Countermarch Loom SH961595 – for approval.

70. Interview with Anita Apinis-Herman.

71. Ibid.

72. King and Christou, “Of Counter-Diaspora and Reverse Transnationalism,” 452.

73. Interview with Marianna Auliciema, Riga, Latvia, 1 April 2015.

74. Ibid.

75. Tsuda, “Introduction,” 1.

76. Ibid., 3.

77. Cook-Martín and Viladrich, “Imagined Homecomings,” 133–58.

78. Tsuda, “Introduction,” 7.

79. Ibid., 3.

80. Ibid., 7.

81. Interview with Anita Apinis-Herman.

82. Ibid.

83. Ibid.

84. LAMRC, “Latvians Abroad.”

85. LAMRC, Latvian Footprints Around the World.

86. LAMRC, “Anita Apine-Hermane today.”

87. Interview with Marianna Auliciema.

88. Ibid.

89. Interview with Anita Apinis-Herman.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid.

92. Interview with Marianna Auliciema.

93. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 8.

94. Ibid., 7–8.

95. Interview with Anita Apinis-Herman.