Shiman, Paul

Paul Schiemann was born in 1876 in Mitawa to a family of Baltic (Baltic) Germans who settled in Courland in the second half of the 18th century. His father, in an effort to avoid getting Paul and his elder brother into the education system of the Courland province , at that time subjected to intense Russification, sent the children to get an education in Germany. There Paul studied law (first having graduated from the University of Cologne ^[1] , and then in 1902, received his doctoral degree in Greifswald ), but paid considerable attention to other subjects, at a certain moment having fallen under the influence of Friedrich Naumann's ideas ^[2] .

In 1903, Schiemann began his career as a journalist at the newspaper, published in Revel by the liberal editor Christoph Mikvitz. In this newspaper, he served as a theater critic and assistant editor. In 1907, he moved to the newspaper Rigasche Rundschau , where, in addition to the theater criticism department, he also led political columns. His theater studies in 1912 led to the publication of a separate academic publication. In 1919, Schiemann occupied the post of editor-in-chief of Rundschau, where he remained until 1933 , during which time he turned it into one of the most influential German-language newspapers in Eastern Europe, not least due to his own publications, distinguished by provocativeness and directness. In his articles, Schiemann advocated moderate liberal views, welcomed the introduction of a constitution in Russia and the beginning of social reforms. In 1907, he headed the Estonian Constitutional Party, which is ideologically close to the Riga Baltic Constitutional Party and Octobrists , with the intention of participating in elections to the Duma , but found that it does not enjoy the support of the indigenous population. Nevertheless, his liberalism and rejection of the estate arrogance of the Ostsee nobility led to an aggravation of relations with the conservative majority among the Baltic Germans, who dubbed him “red Schiemann” ^[3] .

The democratic ideology professed by Shiman and loyalty to the community of Baltic Germans did not interfere with his loyalty to the Russian Empire . He underwent compulsory military service in the Russian army ^[1] , and with the beginning of the First World War he became a reserve officer. The military service led to Shiman having to leave Riga on the eve of her occupation by German troops ^[4] , and after returning he was sent by German authorities to Germany in 1918 due to suspicions of sympathy for Latvian nationalists. Paradoxically, these sanctions led to the fact that Schiemann, who turned out to be in Berlin precisely during the days of Germany’s turn towards union with the young Baltic republics, played a prominent role in shaping the pro-Baltic policy of the Weimar Republic ^[5] .

By the time Schiemann returned to Riga, the German community in Latvia was not having the best of times, having suffered massive property expropriations. Under these conditions, he was perceived as a new ideological leader and already in 1919 headed not only the Rigasche Rundschau newspaper, but also the new , which was supported by the ideologist of the conservative wing of the Baltic Germans Baron . In 1920, Schiemann became the chairman of the Committee of the Political Parties of the Baltic Germans, created to coordinate their actions ^[6] . In the same year, he was elected to the Riga City Council, where he sat until 1925 , and to the Constituent Assembly of Latvia , after the constitution was approved in 1922, becoming a member of the Seimas . He remained a member of all subsequent convocations of the Diet until 1933 ^[1] .

In the 1920s, the German-Baltic Party, being a party of an ethnic minority, nonetheless successfully established itself as a loyal organization in Latvia. Back in 1919, Schiemann published a call for return, addressed to the Germans who had emigrated from Latvia. The invitation to participate in the development of the Latvian statehood included the words: "He who today leaves his place in the ranks in our country, renounces his place in the world." This consistent loyalty bore fruit: the German-Baltic party was perceived in Latvia as an integral part of the national political process, its representatives were in the cabinet, and once, in the second half of the 20s, President Jānis Čakste even suggested that Szyman himself form a government. He, having estimated the coalition of 52 out of 100 deputies at his disposal as too shaky, refused the offer. However, the result of the ideological evolution of Shiman - his bill on cultural autonomy for the Germans of Latvia - was buried in the Diet in the late 1920s ^{[7] [8]} .

In 1925, Schiman and his like-minded Baltic Germans were at the origin of the Congress of European Nationalities (also known as the Congress of European Minorities ^[9] , although Schiemann himself avoided the notion of a “minority” for fear of negative connotations). In time, this coincided with the Locarno Congress and Gustav Stresemann’s statements in support of the idea of ​​autonomy of national minorities in Europe in a situation when the League of Nations was unable to resolve this issue. All national minorities of Europe were represented in the Congress, each of which sent its delegates, but the influence of the German delegates (who were headed by Schiman himself) remained virtually the greatest ^[10] .

By the beginning of the 1930s, the national policy in Latvia began to change in the direction of tightening, and in 1933, Schiman, who was already elected for the fourth consecutive term of the Sejm, refused his deputy’s mandate and moved to Vienna , where he continued to work on the “rational” State of. Shortly thereafter, in May 1934, a coup was committed in Latvia, which led to the establishment of the Ulmanis dictatorship ^[4] . Shiman did not recognize the legitimacy of the Ulmanis government, considering it to be unconstitutional ^[9] .

The period of Schiemann's stay in Austria, however, turned out to be short. The country underwent an intensive process of nationalization , ended in 1938 with the Anschluss , and Schiemann, who did not accept Nazi ideas, hastened to return to Riga. There he was among the approximately 15,000 Germans who refused in 1939 to undergo " repatriation ", which provided for their resettlement in the lands of occupied Poland ^[4] . In his publications, he strongly criticized his former compatriots, who now deny rights to other national minorities ^[11] .

Sources differently report a short period of Schiemann’s residence in Soviet Latvia. If the site of the Yad Vashem Museum writes that in the first year of Soviet power in Latvia, he and his wife Charlotte managed to avoid expulsion to Siberia, hiding from friends ^[9] , then according to the journalist of the Latvian newspaper Vesti Segoday , Nikolai Kabanov Soviet The authorities not only did not touch their ideological adversary, but also provided him with a lecturer department at the State University of the Latvian SSR in the early summer of 1941 ^[4] . In any case, Shiman did not become a victim of repression and after the occupation of Riga by the Germans : poor health allowed him to live his days at home, although he was the object of surveillance by the new authorities. At the end of 1942, Paul and Charlotte Schiman even managed to hide at home the young Jewish woman, Valentina Freimane , who had lost her entire family in the Riga ghetto . Thanks to them, Valentina, the future leading Latvian film expert ^[12] , managed to survive the war, and she herself helped Schiemann to systematize his recordings and memories during this period ^[9] .

Paul Schiemann died of diabetes in Latvia in June 1944 , less than four months before the arrival of the Soviet troops ^{[4] [9]} . His funeral, by order of the German authorities, were as modest as possible, and it was forbidden to mention his political legacy ^[13] . After the death of her husband, Charlotte Schiemann went to relatives in Bavaria, and Valentina Freimane never saw her again. In 1999, the Yad Vashem Museum assigned Paul and Charlotte Schiemann the title of “the righteous of the world ” ^{[1] [9]} .

During the years of his life, Paul Schiman has gone from moderately liberal nationalism to the ideas of equality of national minorities and the national state. In the light of the mutual rejection of the Baltic Germans and the indigenous population of Latvia and Estonia, already in 1907, a future ideological platform began to take shape on the issue of interaction between the state and national minorities ^[14] .

Schiemann was a consistent defender of the right of Baltic Germans to reside in the new Baltic states, relying on hundreds of years of their presence in the region. He fought for the consolidation in the laws of Latvia of the Baltic Germans' right to cultural autonomy and the financing of their cultural institutions by the state, at the same time refraining from any other interference with their activities. Another point of his ideology was the recognition of the individual’s right to national self-determination: from his point of view, not the state on the basis of genealogical research or just a last name, but the person himself had to decide for himself whether he wanted to be included in the register of representatives of national minorities in and pay a voluntary surcharge in that capacity) ^[7] . The position of Schiemann and the Rigasche Rundschau headed by him earned them respect in the midst of another national minority - Latvian Jewry ^[9] . Attracted to the Jews and the fact that Shiman hatched the dream of reform of secondary school education, which will be formed not by the state, but by joint efforts of the Latvian, German, Russian and Jewish national communities ^[15] .

The idea of ​​minority equality in Shiman combined with loyalty and dedication to the countries of residence, which was reflected in the service in the Russian army, and in the call for the return of the Baltic Germans in 1919, and in the policies pursued by the German-Baltic Democratic Party under his leadership. His position on this issue made him a target of criticism from more conservative nationalist politicians in both Latvia and Germany ^[16] , but Schiemann did not change the principles of loyalty even when in 1930 the Riga Cathedral was taken from the Germans of Riga. An important part of his doctrine was the postulate that the well-being of a national minority should never be put above the interests of society as a whole ^[17] .

Ideologically, Szyman was equally far from both national socialism and fascism , which, as he understood, would inevitably lead to the subordination of some nations by others, and the Soviet version of socialism , in which the central government constantly and consistently interfered in the life of every citizen . The formal granting of equality to all peoples in the USSR in the eyes of Shiman was reduced to the permission to use the national language, while other aspects of intellectual life were strictly regulated by the state in the interests of their ideology. The national state, as well as the collectivist state, in the eyes of Shiman were “irrational”, while a rational state should be based on free cooperation in order to achieve a balance between production and consumption ^[18] .

• Garleff, Michael. Schiemann, Carl Christian Theodor Paul // Neue Deutsche Biographie. - 2005. - Bd. 22. - p. 743-744.
• John hiden A Voice from Latvia's Past: Paul Schiemann and the Freedom to Practice One's Culture // The Slavonic and East European Review .. - 1999. - Vol. 77, № 4 . - P. 680-699.
• Freimane, Valentina. Remembering Paul Schiemann (1876–1944) // Journal of Baltic Studies. - 2000. - Vol. 31, № 4 . P. 432-437. - DOI : 10.1080 / 01629770000000191 .

• The righteous of the peoples of the world: Schiemann Paul (? - 1944), Schiemann Charlotte, WIFE (Neopr.) . Yad Vashem. The appeal date is February 12, 2015.