The Contribution of Herrnhut to Supporting Latvian Prisoners of War: A Single Episode in the Context of the First World War or the Continuation of a Tradition?

In contrast to well-researched and also widely depicted Latvian fiction and art about refugees, the complex and dramatic fate of prisoners of war of Latvian ethnicity is much less documented. First World War prisoners were forced to remain in Germany from 1914 after Imperial Russia's unsuccessful battles in East Prussia near the Masurian Lakes. Their numbers grew steadily in the following years, peaking in the summer of 1919 at around 5500 persons, and comprising individuals from different armies. Some ended up spending up to seven years in various prison camps in Germany. They were in severe distress, caused by a lack of information about the fate of their relatives in the Baltic provinces, uncertainty about their own fate, and a lack of information and misinterpretation of the political situation in the territory of contemporary Latvia. The Moravian Church in Herrnhut (Unitas Fratrum) offered spiritual consolation in the form of printed matter, periodicals and books. In 1914, the Moravian Church declared the unchanging and unfaltering dominance of spirituality as a basic value, defining the strengthening of unity as its main internal task and the basic task of the mission — to provide spiritual support to those who are suffering. The archive of the Unitas Fratrum in Herrnhut (Fund No. 4315) contains 59 documents, mainly letters regarding the creating of a periodical in Latvian (published issues, 1915—1917, Nr. 1—8) and a small songbook titled "Garigas dziesmas" (Einige geistliche Lieder in lettischer Sprache) (Herrnhut, 1915) with 50 song lyrics. The article provides insight into the content of the periodicals and the spiritual songbook. It analyses their connection with the traditions of the Unitas Fratrum in the Baltics in previous centuries. An insight into these publications and the context of their development was prepared while working in the archive of the Unitas Fratrum in Herrnhut in the spring of 20231.