Tomas Vytautas Kotovičius

Civitas germanica. Civitas ruthenica. Civitas asiatica? On the ethnic composition of Vilnius as portrayed in late 18th century German-language texts

It is no longer a matter of scholarly debate that Vilnius, the historic capital of Lithuania, has for most of its history functioned as a multiethnic and multicultural city. Most research on the subject has been carried out largely from a historiographic point of view, interpreting various contemporary sources as historical documents from which actual facts or at least their approximations were derived. Little research has been carried out on the outside perception of the ethnic variety of the city which does not necessarily correlate with established historical facts. Given the limited amount of time available as well as poor availability of information prior to the visit, German travellers visiting Vilnius relied largely on selective experience, hearsay and sometimes dubious literary sources when evaluating the city‘s demographics. This gave way to what Slobodan Vladušič (2011) calls the „ghetto of national characterisations“, where minimal information engenders maximum meaning – a key notion in the field of image studies and its concern with mental silhouettes of various nations.

The presentation focuses on several German-language texts dating back to the second half of the 18th century which contain authors‘ opinions on the ethnic variety found in Vilnius. These texts range from travelogues to various encyclopaedic works from the time. The analysis draws heavily on the studies done by Larry Wolffe (1994), Antoni Mączak (1995) and Hubert Orłowski (1994), who have each carried out extensive research on the German perception of Poland-Lithuania as a purportedly semi-European state, bearing strong resemblance to far-away Asian realms in the East. Vilnius, known for its multiethnic demographic composition, may serve a synecdocal, representational function for the nationally-applied stereotypes typical of that time.