Museum night at Bauska Palace – “Life during the plague” – BauskasDzive.lv

This year, the unifying theme of the Museum Night promotion is to learn and acquire, research and understand. The Bauska Palace Museum offers the program “Life during the plague”. At the end of the event, the fire performance “Inferno”, informs Elīna Yegorova, the senior communications specialist of the Bauska Palace Museum.

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In museums, May 18 will be a double holiday, the International Day of Museums will be celebrated, as well as the popular promotion of museum visitors – European Museum Night. Saturday, May 18, from 20 expositions of the Bauska Palace Museum and the Tower of the Livonian Order Castle are open for viewing, E. Yegorova reveals. She says that during her visit to the museum, she will feel the “presence” of the Black Death or Bubonic Plague in various places. Visitors will be shown the animation “Plague doctor” and will open the door to the kunstkamera or rare exhibits room. At the end of the museum night program outside the castle walls, the final event is the fire performance “Inferno”.

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, plague epidemics were a huge scourge that spread fear and terror before them. The people saw the plague as “God’s rod” for sins. Various plagues were not uncommon at that time. Along with the war, there were years of crop failure, famine and scarcity. In the records of the chroniclers of those times, terrible memories of the plague or the Black Death, the Bubonic Epidemic have been preserved – fever, chills, lung cancer, diarrhea, headaches and buboes, which were caused by swelling of the infected lymph nodes. This infectious disease affected the people of our land starting from the 14th century. It “devoured” people’s lives like no other epidemic experienced. The people of the Duchy of Kurzeme and Zemgale survived both the wars and the devastating plague that followed them several times.

According to historical facts, during the Polish-Swedish war in the early 1620s, there was a crop failure in the Duchy of Kurzeme and Zemgale for several years. Famine began and was followed by the plague epidemic of 1623-1625. During the Second Northern War, a plague epidemic raged again in Bauska in 1657-1661. On February 14, 1660, the Bauska city magistrate ordered the collection and burial of corpses on the streets. In just one month, 227 plague victims were buried. Further destruction followed during the Great Northern War. During this, the Bauska castle was partially blown up and 2/3 of the city’s buildings were also destroyed. The early winter of 1708 did not allow harvesting the entire crop, famine and the most terrible Great Plague began. In order to reduce the spread of the plague, on July 3, 1709, church services in Bauska were banned and the dead were ordered to be buried outside the churches. After 1708/1709. After the Great Plague epidemic in Bauska, only a third of the pre-war population remained.

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The horrors of war, lack of food and unfavorable living conditions weakened people. Rat fleas, which spread plague bacilli, sucked the blood of already exhausted people, thereby infecting them. The plague began to spread from person to person by drop and touch, and its victims were doomed to a quick death. Existing dirt also came to the rescue. In order to overcome the bad smell and to “disinfect” the air, sticks, animal horns and nails were burned on street corners and squares. Many peasants, seeing this devastation, refused to work; lived off the last savings and possessions, awaiting the inevitable death. Many sought refuge in the forests. The fear of disease was so great that the sick were left uncared for and the dead unburied. Livestock in abandoned farms, left to be torn apart by hunger and wolves, howled and howled plaintively. The people who were still alive burned their houses and barns so that the disease would not spread further, this is how the epidemic situation is described in historical documents.

The effects of the plague were felt for several decades. Abandoned houses and overgrown fields had to be cleaned up again by the survivors. Despite the plagues and destruction, a new life continued, leaving the memories and stories of what happened as terrible legends. The vitality of the people is amazing, people were born and filled the abandoned land anew.

At the end of the Night of Museums event, during the fire performance “Inferno”, you will be able to witness the symbolic rebirth of new life and opportunities, burning destruction and misfortunes, said E. Yegorova.

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Museum night “Life during the Plague” programme:

• at 20:00 – 22:30 Viewing the expositions and exhibitions of the Bauska Palace Museum. Visiting the central tower with a viewing area and the castle ruins of the Livonian Order;
• at 20:00 – 22:30 “presence” of the Black Death or Bubonic Plague; kunstkamera or room for rare exhibits; the animation “Plague Doctor”;
• at 23:10 in the eastern forecourt of the castle, the final event – fire performance “Inferno”.

Participants and supporters of Bauska Palace Museum Night: Association “Viduramžiai” (Lithuania); Jelgava Student Theater Support Society “MINIATRA”; The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the Latvian University of Biosciences and Technologies and its dean Dr.med.vet. Kaspar Kovalenko; Bauškėnais Jānis Bite with exhibits from his private collection.

The staff of the Bauska Palace Museum informs that the visit to the event is free of charge. The last visitors will be admitted to the palace at 22:30.

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The European Night of Museums is an international museum event that takes place every spring in many European countries since 2005. The initiator and coordinator of the campaign is the French Ministry of Culture and Communications. Information about the promotion in European countries can be found at www.nuitdesmusees.culture.fr. The “Museum Night” action in Latvia is coordinated by the Ministry of Culture in cooperation with the association “Latvian National Committee of the International Council of Museums”.

In the title picture – Museum Night at the Bauska Palace Museum in May of last year. Photo from the archive of “Bauskas Dzīves”.