The Role of Spain in Lithuanian Communication During the First World War

Abstract

The research reveals the contacts between the authorized representatives of the Lithuanian Society, the members of the Lithuanian National Council (in Lausanne), the members and the head of the Lithuanian Information Bureau (in Lausanne), the members of the committee Lituania and the heads and servants of Spanish legations abroad, Prince Alfonso of the Bourbon dynasty of Spain and the representatives of the Spanish society in Barcelona. It also covers information about Spain, Spanish legations abroad, their functions in forwarding letters and transferring money to the territory under German occupation inhabited by Lithuanians (Ober Ost), the division of the committee Lituania in Barcelona, and the articles of the Lithuanian Society in the periodicals published by the Lithuanian Information Bureau in Lithuanian and foreign languages and the Lithuanian party press. The research covers the chronological period from 25 August 1915 to 11 November 1918, i.e. from the establishment of the Refugee Registration and Information Bureau (in Petrograd) to the formation of the Provisional Government of Lithuania. The research is based on published (press, published documents) und unpublished sources (from the Political Archive of the German Foreign Office, the Manuscripts Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, the documents of the Manuscripts Department of Vilnius University Library). The research employed the methods of qualitative analysis and synthesis (the new material of the sources was supplemented with the information circulating in historiography), the comparative method (the facts found in Lithuanian manuscript collections, German archives and the press are compared), the descriptive method and the inductive method. To process the primary sources in Lithuanian, German and Russian languages, the logical-analytical method was applied (the notional content and information analysis was conducted). The research consists of three parts. In the first part of the research, the author investigates the role played by Spanish legations abroad in sending letters and money to the Lithuanian territory under German occupation and back (1916–1918) and states that the analysis of the press and published memoirs of the period in question leads to the conclusion that Spanish legations abroad played a crucial role in sending inquiries about family and friends as well as money into the Lithuanian territory under German occupation (Ober Ost) and back (1916–1917). It was the safest way to send and receive information and money. An alternative to the Spanish legation in sending money to the largest cities of Lithuania occupied by Germany, namely Vilnius and Kaunas, originated at the end of 1917 and in 1918 when Stockholms Enskilda Banken opened its branches in Vilnius, Kaunas, Suwalki, and Białystok. In the second part of the study, the author reveals the attempt of Juozas Gabrys to elect Spanish Prince Alfonso as King of Lithuania and concludes that after investigating the minutes of the sessions of the Lithuanian National Council (in Lausanne) of 1918 and the documents of 1918 kept in the Political Archive of the German Foreign Office, it turned out that the head of the Lithuanian Information Bureau, Juozas Gabrys, and the members of the Lithuanian National Council (in Lausanne) maintained a close contact with Spanish Prince Alfonso residing in Switzerland (Zürich) and shared Lithuanian realities with him. It should be noted that even after Wilhelm of Urach was elected as King of Lithuania Mindaugas II, Gabrys did not lose hope to change the situation to the benefit of Spanish Prince Alfonso by also involving the representatives of the German Foreign Ministry and other persons interested in this matter or inspired by him. The third part of the study reveals the circumstances of establishing the Spanish division of the Committee Lituania and its activity fields. After systemising the episodes of the information, which appeared in Lithuanian periodicals, it became clear that the establishment of the division of the committee Lituania in Spain in 1917 was driven by several factors: first, the Lithuanian Day declared by the pope (7 May 1917) in the Catholic churches of the world on which collections were organized in favour of the Lithuanian war victims and, second, the attempt to inform the Spanish society about Lithuanians and Lithuania if Spanish Prince Alfonso should by any chance be elected as King of Lithuania. Public relations were the major focus of the Barcelona division of the committee Lituania: to spread as favourable information about Lithuanians and Lithuania as possible.