Riga
| Riga | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| — City — | |||
 |
|||
|
|||
 |
|||
  Riga |
|||
| Coordinates: 56°56′56″N 24°6′23″E / 56.94889°N 24.10639°ECoordinates: 56°56′56″N 24°6′23″E / 56.94889°N 24.10639°E | |||
| Country |  Latvia |
||
| Government[1] | |||
| - Type | City council | ||
| - Mayor | Nils Ušakovs | ||
| Area(2002) [2] | |||
| - City | 307.17 km2 (118.6 sq mi) | ||
| - Water | 48.50 km2 (18.7 sq mi) 15.8% | ||
| - Metro | 10,132 km2 (3,912 sq mi) | ||
| Population (2010) [3] | |||
| - City | 706,413 | ||
| - Density | 2,299.7/km2 (5,956.3/sq mi) | ||
| - Metro | 1,098,523 (Riga Region) | ||
| - Metro density | 108.3/km2 (280.5/sq mi) | ||
| - Demonym | Rīdzinieki | ||
| Ethnicity(2010) [4] | |||
| - Latvians | 42.4 % | ||
| - Russians | 41.0 % | ||
| - Belarusians | 4.0 % | ||
| - Ukrainians | 3.9 % | ||
| - Poles | 2.0 % | ||
| Time zone | EET (UTC+2) | ||
| - Summer (DST) | EEST (UTC+3) | ||
| Calling codes | 66 & 67 | ||
| Website | www.riga.lv | ||
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia, a major industrial, commercial, cultural and financial centre of the Baltic region, and an important seaport, situated on the mouth of the Daugava. In 1935, it had 385,063 inhabitants[5], but by 2010 that had risen to 709,145. It is the largest city of the Baltic states and third-largest in the Baltic region, behind Saint Petersburg and Stockholm (counting residents within the city limits).
Contents
History
The city of Riga was founded in 1200 by Albert von Buxhovden, German Bishop of Uexkull, a former Canon of Bremen Cathedral, and founder of the military religious Order of the Brothers of the Sword. He built Riga Cathedral, with new bells, and engaged in a major building programme.[6].
As part of the Eastern Settlement, the bishops tried to settle primarily Germans in the pagan area. Militarily they were supported primarily by knightly orders, initially by the Order of the Brothers of the Sword and, after its decline, by the Teutonic Order, into which the Order of the Brothers of the Sword was incorporated. Especially after the Crusaders were expelled from Palestine, the Teutonic Order began to pay more attention to the Eastern European areas, especially Prussia, but also Livonia. The Teutonic Order was an organisationally independent, powerful ecclesiastical organization that soon competed with the Archbishops of Riga as a new power factor. The Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order was led by a country master who reported directly to the Grand Master (= Supreme Lord of the Order).
The numerous disputes between the Archbishops of Riga and the Teutonic Order were fought out both by force of arms and through trials at the Holy See. The bishops tried to find protection from nearby states such as Denmark but also from the Roman-German Emperor. Since the Battle of Neuermühlen in 1492, the Archbishop of Riga recognized the Teutonic Order as the protecting power of Livonia (1492–1561) and also took part in the Battle of Lake Smolina in 1502 with his own army contingent.
Port
Riga developed into a major Baltic port, and by 1912 Riga, Libau and Windau (all in Latvia), together handled more shipping than St Petersburg. Between 1908 and 1911 those same ports, on which converged three of Russia's great railways, dealt with no less than a third of all exports and imports of European Russia. Riga became the biggest wood-export harbour in Europe and doubled its shipping trade between 1900 and 1913.[7]
WWI
The Battle of Riga (German: Schlacht um Riga) took place in early September 1917 and was last major campaign on the Eastern Front of World War I before the Russian Provisional Government and its army began disintegrating. The battle was fought between Oskar von Hutier's German Eighth Army (60,000 men) and Dmitri Parsky's Russian Twelfth Army (192,000 men). On 3 September 1917, the German flag flew over the liberated city, on 5 September 1917 the rest of the Russian forces had been destroyed. The Russians suffered 25,000 casualties and 9,000 captured.
The fall of Riga weakened the Russian front line along the Baltic Sea, bringing German forces closer to Petrograd, and was followed by Operation Albion (de), an amphibious landing on several islands in the Baltic by the Imperial German Navy. The offensive was also the first large scale use of stormtrooper infantry tactics by the Imperial German Army, which had been expanded by Oskar von Hutier, before their use in the West during the 1918 spring offensive.
The Baltic State Army (Baltische Landeswehr) was formed in November 1918 from Baltic German volunteers to defend against the Bolsheviks in the three Baltic provinces. After initial failures, Courland and Livonia were liberated in the spring of 1919. On 22 May 1919, the Baltic fighters managed to liberate Riga again. The provisional Reich government in Berlin forbade any action beyond the line reached and ordered the withdrawal of the strongest unit, the 1st Guard Reserve Division. Even before this division had been loaded, the operation on Riga was carried out on the corps' own initiative. On 22 May, the Landeswehr carried out a coup on Riga, led by the elite shock troops under Hans Baron von Manteuffel. Reich German units held the right flank near Bauske against an attempt to encircle. At the end of the battle, large parts of the Soviet Army were wiped out and the self-proclaimed Bolshevik government of the “Latvian Soviet Republic” fled to Dvinaburg.
In Riga, where famine was already looming, around 18,000 political prisoners were freed. US ships brought food to the city. Due to the rapid advance, many Red Army soldiers and Soviet officials were no longer able to leave the city in time and cowardly hid among the civilian population. On 5 October 1919, Prince Awaloff-Bermondt with his West Russian Liberation Army (Westrussische Befreiungsarmee), who now had 15,000 Russian and 40,000 German soldiers, declared the entire Latvian territory the base of operations for the army and called on Latvians and Lithuanians to fight together against Bolshevism.
WWII
When World War II started in September 1939, the fate of Latvia and therefore also Riga had already been decided. In October 1939, Latvia had to sign a dictated treaty of mutual assistance by which the U.S.S.R. obtained military, naval, and air bases on Latvian territory. On 17 June 1940, Latvia was invaded and occupied by the Red Army. After Latvia was annexed into the Soviet Union, a period known as the “year of terror” ensued. In the first year of Soviet occupation, about 35,000 Latvians, especially the intelligentsia, were deported to eastern portions of the U.S.S.R., many of them to prison camps in Siberia. Young men were forcibly conscripted in the Red Army.
Operation Barbarossa in 1941 changed that, Latvia was liberated and declared a province of a larger Ostland, which included Estonia, Lithuania, and Belorussia (now Belarus). Many Latvians joined the Wehrmacht. The Latvian Legion (a volunteer unit of the Waffen-SS) was formed in 1943. In October 1944, weak German forces were forced to withdraw. The German Army Group North under General Ferdinand Schörner (de) had been driven into the Courland Pocket, where it remained defiant until the end of the war in Europe. Riga was taken by forces of the Soviet 3rd Baltic Front on 13 October 1944. Years of terror, murder and rape would follow.
Education
From an early date there had been a cathedral school in Riga, which closed its doors during the early Reformation period. The council however, engaged in 1527 the Dutchman Jacobus Battus as a Latin master, and he reopened the Domschule as an evangelical school, based upon Melanchthon's Praeceptor Germaniae curriculum. The town council also offered university scholarships in the 1530s, mostly to Rostock or Wittenberg. From 1525 publications, mostly religious, began appearing in Latvian, the first full book, the Cathechismus Catholicorum in 1585.[8]
References
- ↑ Riga City Council. Riga City Council. Retrieved on 2009-07-22.
- ↑ Riga in Figures. Riga City Council. Retrieved on 2007-08-02.
- ↑ Table IE52:Resident Population by Region, City and District at the beginning of the year. csb.gov.lv.
- ↑ Resident Population by Ethnicity and by Region, Cityr and District at the Bebinning of the Year. csb.gov.lv. Retrieved on 2010-07-22.
- ↑ Encyclopaedia Britannica Year Book 1938, London, 1938, p.368.
- ↑ Lettus, Henricus, translated by James A. Brundage, The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, Columbia University Press, New York, 2003, p.xxii, ISBN 0-231-12888-6
- ↑ Hiden, John, The Baltic States and Weimar Ostpolitik, Cambridge University Press, U.K., 1987, p.65-6. ISBN 0-521-32032-2
- ↑ Kirby, David, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period - The Baltic World 1492-1772, London, 1990, p.94. ISBN 0-582-00410-1 CSD
