About us
The tasks of the German-Baltic Cultural Association are carried out by three institutions: the Carl-Schirren Society, the German-Baltic Cultural Foundation and the German-Baltic Future Foundation.
About the Cultural Association
After the war, Lüneburg developed into a centre for the Baltic Germans in the Federal Republic of Germany. The German-Baltic Cultural Association, based here, has set itself the goal of collecting, preserving, researching and communicating the cultural heritage of the Baltic Germans, as well as promoting research into this heritage. To this end, it works closely with other scientific institutions and cultural organisations. Since the end of the Cold War, particular emphasis has been placed on maintaining contact with people and organisations in the former home countries of Estonia and Latvia, and more recently also with Lithuania, which has undergone a different historical development.
Felicitas Wende
Head of the office & member of the CSG board
Dr. Martin Pabst
Scientific Director CSG
The three institutions of the Cultural Association
All three institutions are located in the Brömsehaus, one of the oldest patrician houses in Lüneburg. The Karl Ernst von Baer Foundation, the Baltic Architectural Monuments Association, the Raedersche Cultural Foundation for the Baltic States/East Prussia and the Paul Kaegbein Foundation are also based in the Brömsehaus.
History of the Baltic region and the Baltic Germans
Due to its location on the Baltic Sea and the Daugava River, the area that is now Estonia and Latvia was already a transit zone for trade between Western Europe and the vast expanses of Russia during the Viking Age. Its inhabitants – Estonians, Livonians, Curonians, Selonians, Semigallians and Latgalians (today's Latvians) – were converted to Christianity by German missionaries at the turn of the 13th century. They were accompanied by nobles and merchants who, by founding castles and towns – the first being Riga in 1201 – created medieval Livonia, whose towns were part of the Hanseatic League and profited from trade between Russia and Western Europe.
This permanently integrated the region into Western structures, which was reflected, among other things, in the spread of the Reformation, as a result of which German-Baltic pastors created the Estonian and Latvian written languages with spiritual texts. For centuries, German nobles, clergy, merchants and craftsmen lived alongside the Estonian and Latvian populations under changing Polish, Swedish and Russian rule until the republics of Estonia and Latvia were established in 1918. From the conquest in the 13th century until the beginning of the 20th century, relations between Germans and Estonians and Latvians were torn between the transmission of Western culture and the prevention of social and national emancipation. As a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939, the Baltic states fell under the influence of the Soviet Union. Almost all Baltic Germans (German inhabitants of Estonia and Latvia) left their homeland as part of the ‘resettlement’ and were mostly settled in occupied Poland (‘Reichsgau Wartheland’). With the collapse of the ‘Third Reich’, they fled to the West.
More information abou the Baltics under https://ome-lexikon.uni-oldenburg.de/regionen/baltikum/
The German-Baltic Society, the Carl-Schirren Society and the German-Baltic Cultural Foundation welcome the activities of the German-Baltic Future Foundation and support its development into a German-Baltic Youth Organization. They see this as one of their central projects, because the recruitment of young people in particular from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Germany for the realization of their goals represents an important basis for future-oriented German-Baltic work. They ask all Baltic Germans and their organizations to support these activities to the best of their ability.