The box in which Liselotte Bockslaff put coffee to post to Gunārs Priede. Rinteln, Germany, 1980s-1990s. Gunārs Priede kept this postal box for storing photographs of stage productions and other events. RTMM 436920

Liselotte Bockslaff and Gunārs Priede receiving the book Arhitekts Vilhelms Bokslafs un Rīga. Rīga, 10th July, 1997. RTMM p126177

Gunārs Priede’s letter to Liselotte Bockslaff. Lielvārde, 7th June, 1990.

March’s Artefact of the Month is dedicated to the most popular Latvian playwright of the Soviet period, Gunārs Priede (1928–2000); March 17th would have been his 90th birthday. The MLM’s artefact for this month tells a story about the period of the Latvian National Awakening and during the 1990s – a time of transition, when Latvia was able to shake off the shackles of the Soviet occupation, becoming a free and independent country. However, the transition from a planned economy to a market economy brought changes that many were not prepared for. What did this period of transition mean to Gunārs Priede, a creative person, the former head of the Latvian Writers’ Union and a playwright, who had lived through periods of severe censorship as well as great popularity?

The answer to this question lies in Gunārs Priede’s manuscripts and correspondence. An item that vividly characterises one particular and special aspect of his correspondence is a postal box. For more than ten years, he corresponded with Liselotte Bockslaff (born von Schablowsky, 1916-2002) – the daughter-in-law of Wilhelm Bockslaff, a notable architect who was responsible for the construction of many buildings in Rīga in the first half of the 20th century. They met at the Latvian Writers’ Union in 1984 while Liselotte was visiting Latvia. She had come to the Benjamins’ House to see the rooms that she associated with many memories from her youth. Her husband, Wilhelm Bockslaff, Jr., was an architect, and architecture was one of the topics that connected the certified architect Gunārs Priede and the Bockslaff family. The dramatist, Gunārs Priede, was actively involved in paying homage to architect Wilhelm Ludwig Nicholas Bockslaff, Sr., in Latvia. In 1997, a book by Gunārs Priede, Arhitekts Vilhelms Bokslafs un Rīga, was published, funded by the Bockslaff family.

This coming October 12th, we will mark what would have been the 160th birthday of this Rīga-born Baltic German architect. Wilhelm Bockslaff designed the Commercial School (now the Art Academy of Latvia), the Church of the Cross in Rīga (jointly with E. V. E. Friesendorff), Dubulti church in Jūrmala, and a number of other buildings in Rīga, such as the former English Seamen’s Club building at Pils iela 11, which currently houses the Danish Embassy; and the office and apartment building for the Great Guild at Amatu iela 4, which now houses the Riga City Construction Board. The buildings designed by him are in a number of different styles – eclecticism, neo-Gothic, and Art Nouveau.

The correspondence between Gunārs Priede and Mrs. Bockslaff indicates that the box chosen as the Artefact of the Month was not the only postal box she sent to the playwright from Germany. Liselotte Bockslaff frequently sent the Priede family coffee, which was hard to obtain in Latvia. During the 1990s Latvia experienced multiple crises, such as the loss of savings when banks went bankrupt, and living expenses noticeably exceeded the level of income. Coffee was one of those things that became a luxury item for many, to be drunk only on special occasions. Which is why, in Gunārs Priede’s case, the answer to the question of what coffee was like in a Latvia that had just been awoken and liberated would have been that it was both inspiringly sweet and intensely bitter.

As Gunārs Priede wrote to Liselotte Bockslaff on 7th June, 1990, “many in Latvia have now had to give up coffee. One solution is to buy green coffee beans and roast them yourself and in that way to produce something similar to coffee… But we have it, thanks to you, filling our home with its fragrance when we brew it for breakfast. Sometimes our conscience bothers us because, for one thing, we have such exclusive circumstances, and, for another, we’re allowing you to take care of us, a group of able-bodied people, who all work and receive a pension…”

Gunārs Priede’s letters to Liselotte often begin with sincere gratitude for yet another mailing box containing coffee. During the 1990s, Mrs. Bockslaff sent Gunārs Priede not only coffee but also groceries, as well as clothing and shoes. As an example, in his letter of 9th December, 1992, the dramatist thanked Liselotte for her mailing box sent for Christmas “containing beautiful Christmas tree decorations, coffee, chocolate, bullion cubes and vitamins”. Even when Gunārs Priede celebrated his 70th birthday in 1998, he served his guests coffee that had been sent by Mrs. Bockslaff. After Latvia’s economy began to grow – a period which, as we now know, ended in 2008 with another banking and financial crisis – Mrs. Bockslaff continued to send coffee as a friendly gesture, filling the Priede family home with its pleasant fragrance. Thanks to Mrs. Bockslaff, coffee at the dramatist’s home tasted of freedom, which other people could only dream about. Thanks to Mrs. Bockslaff, during the 1990s fragrant coffee, a daily ritual, a source of energy and, for many artists around the world, also of inspiration, was a part of the playwright’s breakfast.

Mrs. Bockslaff also sent money, which Gunārs Priede received with mixed feelings, as he expressed in a letter to her – he felt confused, but he took it with gratitude, accepting Liselotte’s justification that she was sponsoring the playwright’s literary activity by doing so.

Gunārs Priede received his last letter from Mrs. Bockslaff around his 72nd birthday, ten months before he passed away: “Dear Mr. Priede, I hope you will be able to read my letter; my eyes are failing me. […] I thank you for your loyalty and for your letters. I have collected them all, and I cannot discard them. Maybe they will be useful for a book. I thank you for your friendship. Yours, Liselotte Bockslaff” (14.03.2000). Liselotte Bockslaff passed away two years later.

The postal box, in which Mrs. Bockslaff sent coffee, and which Gunārs Priede later kept for storing photographs of stage productions and other events, is a vivid symbol of its time. It represents the sweetness and the bitterness of this transitional period, which the dramatist Gunārs Priede tasted as he enjoyed his morning coffee.