UNESCO
We are proud that our collection includes unique cultural heritage items inscribed in Latvia’s national UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
Correspondence of Rainis and Aspazija (1894–1929)
The 35‑year correspondence between Rainis and Aspazija was added to the register in 2009.
The correspondence forms a substantial part of the Rainis and Aspazija collection held here – nearly 15,000 items.
The registered correspondence includes 2499 letters in Latvian, Russian and German, 1154 letters from Aspazija to Rainis and 1345 letters from Rainis to Aspazija.
This correspondence between two globally significant creative personalities reflects the poets’ role in the Europeanisation of national cultural processes, fostering ideas of statehood, and contributing to the establishment of an independent Latvian state.
The exchange between these two such remarkable creative figures is not only a treasure of Latvian cultural history but also a significant heritage of global importance.
Collection of Hernhutian manuscripts 18th–19th century
The Hernhutian manuscripts of the 18th–19th centuries were added to the national register in 2017, and our items in 2022.
It includes a unique body of texts produced in Vidzeme from 1758 to 1892. The collection consists of 425 handwritten documents in Latvian by both Latvian and German Brethren, vividly attesting to the religious revival movement and the formation of Latvian national identity in the 18th–19th centuries.
We preserve 19 manuscripts – autobiographical handwritten booklets from the 18th and early 19th centuries, as well as speeches, prayers, and internal rules of the congregation. Almost all manuscripts are in writer Augusts Saulietis’s collection.
Letters written on birch bark in Siberia
Collection was included in the national register in 2009.
It comprises 45 letters written between 1941 and 1965 in places of detention and exile by repressed Latvian citizens to their family and friends. Each letter is a symbolic record of their life stories, dignity, and love for Latvia.
The authors were members of the Latvian intelligentsia and peasantry.
We are one of eleven Latvian museums to hold these unique documentary heritage items.
We hold nine letters by poet and writer Aleksandrs Pelēcis. Letters include poems, one addressed to playwright Mārtiņš Zīverts.