Garlieb Merkel

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Garlieb Helwig Merkel (31 October 1769, Lēdurga, Latvia – 9 May 1850, Riga) was a Baltic German writer and activist and an early Estophile and Lettophile.

Merkel was born into the family of a rural priest in Livonia. From the age of 17 he worked as a tutor for upper-class families. In 1790 he joined the circle of Riga intellectuals. Influenced by the ideas he found there, he published the book Die Letten ("Latvians") in 1794, which described in the darkest terms the life of the peasantry and the atrocities of the German landowners and called upom the Imperial Russian government to intervene and ameliorate the lot of the Latvian people. The book gained quite big popularity in the German society and was translated into French, Danish and Russian. In 1800 original-German version of the book was re-published. Finally, in the 20th century it was translated also in Latvian.

Merkel's book caused a storm of anger among the landowners of Livonia, and Merkel was forced into exile. He moved to Weimar, then in 1800 to Berlin, where he was the co-editor with August von Kotzebue of the weekly Der Freimutige (1803-1806).

In 1816 Merkel returned to Livonia. He published the book My Ten Years in Germany (1818) and Images and Characters from My Life (two volumes, 1839-1840). He also wrote the pamphlet Free Latvians and Estonians (1820), which was published in Leipzig.

[edit] References

• Raun, Toivo U. (2003). Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Estonian nationalism revisited. Nations and Nationalism 9.1, 129-147.
• Merkel, Garlieb. Die Vorzeit Lieflands: Ein Denkmahl des Pfaffen- und Rittergeistes. 2 vols., Berlin: Vossische Buchhandlung, 1807.

[edit] Further reading

• Deniss Hanovs. The National Movement in Latvia in the 19th Century. The Nation as a Quasi-Religion (2003)
• Roger Bartlett. Nation, Revolution und Religion in der Gesellschaftskonzeption von Garlieb Merkel (2005)