Between the Žemaitukai Pony Breed and Lithuanian Hounds: Industrial Production of Mead in the Interwar Lithuania, Inveniens quaero, Vilnius, 2011, p. 624–663. (original) (raw)

Between the Žemaitukai Pony Breed and Lithuanian Hounds: Industrial Production of Mead in the Interwar Lithuania, Inveniens quaero, Vilnius, 2011, p. 624–663.

The article discusses industrial mead production in interwar Lithuania that has not yet been duly covered in historiography. The production and consumption of mead by general public at that time, likewise many other things of Lithuanian cultural heritage, for instance, the Žemaitukai pony breed, Lithuanian Hounds, hunting dogs – was in a rather ambiguous situation because of the objective economic and cultural circumstances of that time, and some of those phenomena appeared even in a peculiar socioculturally-marginal position. They were identified as the inherent features of the Lithuanian nation and signs of the old ducal Lithuanian history, and they were supposed to belong to the newly-established national tradition that should be necessarily protected by the state. On the other hand, except for the Žemaitukai breed, various projects, undertaken at that time, did not involve objects of national culture. The other two objects of the cultural heritage mentioned – the Lithuanian Hounds and mead – were in the state of stagnation because, in a comparatively poor and poorly-educated society, without any material and legal support from the state, the general public and business people could not contribute to their marked development. Without any tax relief allowed, the comparatively expensive mead was stifled by vodka, beer and fortified wine, whereas the Lithuanian Hounds, because of the limitations in hunting, were on the brink of extinction. There were even attempts to replace them with ... dachshunds. The article analyses the development of these two separate fragments of historical heritage, by discussing the general features of mead production in the 19th and 20th c. and by describing the two enterprises: a small distillery, owned by the businesswoman Liudvika Stankevičienė in Kaunas that operated approximately from 1912 to 1941 and one of the largest breweries in Lithuania at that time – the Goldberg Company which had a separate mead division “Patrimpas” in 1931–1941. The article discusses the companies’ premises and equipment, the scale of production, advertising matters, and other issues. It is stated that, to a certain degree, mead occupied the intermediary position between the Žemaitukai and Hounds. Mead began to acquire its nationally-significant and representative status among the society elite only towards the end of the fourth decade of the 20th c., on the eve of the Soviet occupation.