page_title: Simonas Daukantas
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Simonas Daukantas / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: Lithuania 100 litu 2000
context_page_description: Simonas Daukantas was a Lithuanian/Samogitian historian, writer, and ethnographer. One of the pioneers of the Lithuanian National Revival, he is credited as the author of the first book on the history of Lithuania written in the Lithuanian language. Only a few of his works were published during his lifetime and he died in obscurity. However, his works were rediscovered during the later stages of the National Revival. His views reflected the three major trends of the 19th century: romanticism, nationalism, and liberalism.
  Daukantas was born in Kurščiūnai to a Lithuanian family. Likely a son of free peasants, he later produced proof of his noble birth to get university degree and a promotion in his government job. He attended schools in Kretinga and Žemaičių Kalvarija and was noted as an excellent student. Daukantas studied law at the University of Vilnius, though his interest lay in philology and history. After the graduation, he worked as a civil servant of the Russian Empire from 1825 to 1850. He first worked at the office of the Governor-General of Livonia, Estonia and Courland in Riga then moved to Saint Petersburg to work at the Governing Senate.
context_section_description: While Daukantas died in obscurity and most of his works unpublished, growing Lithuanian National Revival celebrated his patriotism. Already in the first issue of Aušra, the first Lithuanian-language newspaper, Jonas Šliūpas started publishing multi-part biography of Daukantas and raised the idea of publishing his works. Two historical studies by Daukantas were first published in Vienybė lietuvninkų and later in separate books by Lithuanian Americans in the 1890s. Daukantas' life and work were studied by Eduards Volters, who presented a paper to the Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1887, Jonas Jablonskis, who published an article in Varpas in 1893, and by Mečislovas Davainis-Silvestraitis, who published a collection of documents about Daukantas in the United States in 1898. In 1893, Lithuanian newspapers commemorated the 100th birth anniversary. On that occasion, Davainis-Silvestraitis brought a painter to talk to people who knew Daukantas while he was alive and create his portrait. The resulting portrait, though of low artistic quality, was published in United States in an album compiled by Antanas Milukas.
  In 1901, Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas discovered the only known contemporary portrait, painted around 1850. Based on this portrait, Petras Rimša created a plaster relief in 1905. In 1910, Daukantas' relatives transferred his manuscripts and library to the Lithuanian Scientific Society which promoted further study of his life and work. Historian Augustinas Janulaitis published an extensive biography of Daukantas in 1913 and his surviving correspondence in 1922. Daukantas works were added to the Lithuanian school curriculum of Lithuanian literature. In 1924, Lithuanian teachers began raising funds for a monument to Daukantas. A bronze sculpture was designed by Vincas Grybas and erected in Papilė in 1930.  Since that time, Daukantas life and works were subjects of numerous academic studies. Two volumes of his selected works were published in 1955 followed by reprints or first publications of his other works. His biography was published as separate monographs by Vytautas Merkys (1972, second edition 1991) and Saulius Žukas (1988).
  In 1927, a bronze bust by sculptor Juozas Zikaras was erected in the garden of the Vytautas the Great War Museum in Kaunas (the bust was destroyed by Soviet authorities and restored in 1988). In 1983, Akmenė District Municipality turned the former clergy house in Papilė where Daukantas spent his last years into a memorial museum. From 1993 to the introduction of the euro in 2015, Daukantas was featured on 100 litas banknotes. A monument by sculptor Regimantas Midvikis in his native Lenkimai was unveiled in 1993. The Simonas Daukantas Award was established in 1989 for accomplishments in historical studies, literary work, or other cultural work. Awarded every two years, it is administered by the Skuodas District Municipality since 2003. Its past recipients included historians Vytautas Merkys, Alfredas Bumblauskas, Edvardas Gudavičius, linguist Giedrius Subačius. His place in Lithuanian history is also commemorated by Daukantas Square, facing the Presidential Palace in Vilnius. Seimas (Lithuanian parliament) declared 2018 as the year of Daukantas.
caption: 100 litai banknote, released in 2000, featuring Daukantas (obverse) and Vilnius University (reverse)
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